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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION:<br />
<strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Penny Green / Thomas MacManus / Alicia de la Cour Venning
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Dr Thomas Kingdom<br />
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Green, P., <br />
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Countdown Economic to Annihilation: and Social Genocide Research in Council Myanmar. (ESRC) <br />
Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) <br />
London:<br />
Queen<br />
International<br />
Mary University<br />
State Crime<br />
of<br />
Initiative.<br />
London (QMUL) <br />
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All photographs, apart from those credited to Greg Constantine<br />
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Authors: <br />
Professor Penny Green, Queen Mary University of London <br />
Professor Front page Penny image:<br />
Green, Queen Mary University of London <br />
Dr Thomas MacManus, Queen Mary University of London <br />
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Greg Constantine<br />
Mary University of London <br />
Recommended citation: Green, P., MacManus, T., de la Cour Venning. A (2015) Countdown to <br />
Recommended<br />
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Annihilation: citation:<br />
Hans<br />
Genocide Green,<br />
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London: T., de International la Cour Venning. State A Crime (2015) Initiative Countdown <br />
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in Myanmar London: International State Crime Initiative <br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION:<br />
<strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Penny Green / Thomas MacManus / Alicia de la Cour Venning
CONTENTS<br />
MAPS 5<br />
CHRONOLOGY 7<br />
ABBREVIATIONS AND GLOSSARY 9<br />
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 11<br />
FOREWORD 13<br />
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 15<br />
PART I: <strong>IN</strong>TRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND 16<br />
1. <strong>IN</strong>TRODUCTION 19<br />
<strong>GENOCIDE</strong>: A FRAMEWORK 21<br />
METHODOLOGY 23<br />
2. BACKGROUND 27<br />
RAKH<strong>IN</strong>E STATE 27<br />
RAKH<strong>IN</strong>E OPPRESSION 28<br />
RAKH<strong>IN</strong>E CIVIL SOCIETY 31<br />
RAKH<strong>IN</strong>E MOBILISATION 34<br />
EMERGENCY COORD<strong>IN</strong>ATION CENTRE 37<br />
PROTESTS 38<br />
ATTACKS ON THE UN AND <strong>IN</strong>GOS 39<br />
RAKH<strong>IN</strong>E NATIONALISM 40<br />
IMPACT OF THE 2012 CONFLICT 48<br />
3
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
PART II: ROAD TO <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> 52<br />
3. STIGMATISATION AND DEHUMANISATION 53<br />
CITIZENSHIP AND WHITE CARDS 56<br />
GENOCIDAL ROLE OF MONKS 59<br />
PREACHERS OF HATE: 969 AND MA BA THA 61<br />
4. HARASSMENT, VIOLENCE AND TERROR 69<br />
<strong>IN</strong>STITUTIONALISED DISCRIM<strong>IN</strong>ATION 70<br />
RACE AND RELIGION LAWS 72<br />
ORGANISED MASSACRES: JUNE 2012 74<br />
5. ISOLATION AND SEGREGATION 79<br />
DETENTION CAMPS 82<br />
PRISON VILLAGES 82<br />
THE GHETTO: AUNG M<strong>IN</strong>GALAR 84<br />
OTHER <strong>IN</strong>DICATORS OF SEGREGATION 86<br />
6. SYSTEMATIC WEAKEN<strong>IN</strong>G 89<br />
CONDITIONS OF DETENTION 90<br />
DENIAL OF HEALTHCARE 93<br />
HUNGER CRISIS 95<br />
LOSS OF LIVELIHOOD 97<br />
7. CONCLUSION 99<br />
BIBLIOGRAPHY 102<br />
LEAKED DOCUMENTS 105<br />
4
Maps<br />
Source: The New York Times<br />
5
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Source: Myanmar Information Management Unit (MIMU)<br />
6
Chronology<br />
1785: Last Rakhine Kingdom annexed by Burmese King Bodawpaya.<br />
1824-26: First Anglo-Burmese war; Arakan (Rakhine) state is annexed to British India.<br />
1942-3: Pro-British Muslims and pro-Japanese Rakhine clash; massacres on both sides. Muslims flee<br />
north and Rakhine people move south, contributing to segregation.<br />
1948: Burma gains independence from Britain, U Nu becomes first Prime Minister.<br />
1959: Burma’s first President, Sao Shwe Thaike, declares, ‘Muslims of Arakan certainly belong to the<br />
indigenous races of Burma’.<br />
1960: Rohingya vote in elections.<br />
1962: Ne Win leads military coup; leads to increasing discrimination of ethnic minorities.<br />
1974: Rakhine granted statehood.<br />
1977-78: Nationwide crackdown on ‘illegal immigration’; 200,000 Rohingya flee to Bangladesh. Most<br />
return to Burma the following year.<br />
1982: Citizenship Law excludes Rohingya from country’s list of 135 national races and strips<br />
Rohingya of citizenship.<br />
1989: Burma renamed Myanmar; Arakan state renamed Rakhine state; new citizenship scrutiny cards<br />
issued to Myanmar nationals, excluding most Rohingya.<br />
1990: Elections held, Rohingya and Kaman parties run; several Rohingya representatives elected.<br />
1991-2: Military operation Pyi Thaya in northern Rakhine state; 250,000 people flee to Bangladesh.<br />
1992: NaSaKa military/border security force established in northern Rakhine state, notorious for abuses.<br />
7
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
1993-95: Rohingya who fled during operation Pyi Thaya repatriated under UNHCR’s watch.<br />
1993: Border Region Immigration Control restricts marriages of Rohingya in Maungdaw township.<br />
1994: Myanmar stops issuing birth certificates to Rohingya children.<br />
1997: Head of Sittwe Immigration Office restricts Rohingya travelling outside their township.<br />
2001: Twenty-eight mosques and Islamic schools destroyed in and around Maungdaw township.<br />
2005: Maungdaw Township Peace and Development Council restricts Rohingya marriages and birth<br />
rate.<br />
2008: Rohingyas granted temporary registration cards and permitted to vote in widely discredited<br />
Myanmar Constitution referendum.<br />
2008-9: Government ‘spot-checks’ Rohingya homes and restricts movement.<br />
2010: Myanmar elections, Rohingya allowed to vote.<br />
2012: Violence erupts in Rakhine state between Buddhists and Muslims.<br />
2014: March: Rakhine nationalists attack international NGO offices in Sittwe; April: Rohingya excluded<br />
from April nationwide census.<br />
2015: February: parliament grants temporary white card holders (mostly Rohingya) the right to<br />
vote in planned constitutional amendment. Days later the President reverses the decision and<br />
declares white cards invalid; May: boat crisis in Andaman Sea reported in the international<br />
press; June: UNHCR estimates over 150,000 people have fled from the Myanmar/Bangladesh<br />
border area since January 2012; August: Rohingya representative in northern Rakhine state,<br />
U Shwe Maung, is barred from re-election.<br />
8
Abbreviations and glossary<br />
969 nationalist movement within the Sangha<br />
AHRDO<br />
Arakan Human Rights and Development Organization<br />
ALD<br />
Arakan League for Democracy<br />
ANP<br />
Arakan National Party (sometimes referred to as ‘Rakhine National Party’)<br />
Arakan<br />
former name of Rakhine state and people<br />
ASEAN<br />
Association of Southeast Asian Nations<br />
Bamar<br />
majority ethnic group in Myanmar, often used interchangeably with ‘Burmese’<br />
and ‘Burman’<br />
Burma<br />
former name of Myanmar (pre-1989)<br />
CSOs<br />
civil society organisations<br />
ECC<br />
Emergency Coordination Centre<br />
ICRC<br />
International Committee of the Red Cross<br />
IDPs<br />
internally displaced persons<br />
<strong>IN</strong>GOs<br />
international NGOs<br />
ISCI<br />
International State Crime Initiative<br />
‘kalar’<br />
pejorative term for Muslims<br />
Kaman<br />
Muslim ethnic minority in Rakhine state<br />
9
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Lee, Yanghee<br />
Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar<br />
Ma Ba Tha<br />
nationalist movement within the Sangha<br />
Mayu District<br />
comprises northern Rakhine state districts of Maungdaw, Buthidaung and<br />
Rathedaung<br />
MSF<br />
Médecins Sans Frontières<br />
NGO<br />
non-governmental organisation<br />
NLD<br />
National League for Democracy, headed by Aung San Suu Kyi<br />
OHCHR<br />
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights<br />
OIC<br />
Organisation of Islamic Countries<br />
Quintana, Tomás Ojea Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar (2008-14)<br />
Rakhine<br />
Buddhist ethnic minority of Rakhine state<br />
RNDP<br />
Rakhine Nationalities Development Party<br />
Rohingya<br />
Muslim ethnic minority in Rakhine state<br />
Sangha<br />
community of ordained monks<br />
SPDC<br />
State Peace and Development Council<br />
tatmadaw<br />
Myanmar’s armed forces<br />
townships<br />
administrative neighbourhoods of towns<br />
UNICEF<br />
UN Children’s Fund<br />
UNOCHA<br />
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs<br />
USDP<br />
Union Solidarity and Development Party, headed by President Thein Sein<br />
WFP<br />
World Food Programme<br />
‘white cards’<br />
temporary ID cards<br />
10
Acknowledgements<br />
This report was generously funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), Queen<br />
Mary University of London (QMUL) School of Law and QMUL’s Public Engagement Department.<br />
We are very grateful for the invaluable assistance of Fatima Kanji, Francis Wade, Phil Rees, Al Jazeera,<br />
Tony Ward, Kristian Lasslett, Donna Guest, Maung Zarni, Tòmas Ojea Quintana, Louise Wise, ‘Petrolhead’,<br />
Greg Constantine, Mark Byrne, Valsamis Mitsilegas, Fortify Rights, Izzy Rhoads and Clare Fermont.<br />
Many thanks, also, to the International State Crime Initiative interns; Valeria Matasci, Tally Abramavitch,<br />
Felix Cleverdon, Jessica Liu, Monica Dorligh, Shazni Hamim, Yukino Kawabata, Phil Reed and Adam<br />
Sutherland.<br />
Special thanks to those who enabled our research inside Myanmar and who must remain anonymous for<br />
their own safety and security.<br />
11
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
12
Foreword<br />
For decades, the Rohingya people in Myanmar have been victims of widespread governmental violations<br />
that, when considered holistically, and analysed systematically, reveal a bleak conclusion: the Rohingya<br />
people are gradually being decimated.<br />
This dramatic conclusion has not been drawn powerfully or often enough. It has been obscured by the<br />
gradual, multidimensional character of discriminatory and oppressive policies against the Rohingya, the<br />
historical unfolding of these policies over many decades, and the fact that they have fluctuated in intensity.<br />
The failure to resolve the critical situation of the Rohingya can be attributed in part to Myanmar’s historic<br />
political democratic transition, which has absorbed the energies and attention of almost all national and<br />
international actors; and to the unfortunate animosity from many in Myanmar toward the Rohingya community<br />
and those who defend them, even those who were and are still victims of human rights violations.<br />
Careful government planning grounded in decades of military rule, and skillful diplomatic manipulation,<br />
has further exacerbated an already intractable crisis.<br />
With respect to the international community, the balance at this moment is mainly negative. The constant<br />
voicing of concerns regarding the suffering of the Rohingya, even the most pressing and urgent ones, are<br />
not enough to dismantle the machinery that oppresses them. Nor is there a sufficiently deep or complex<br />
understanding of the fundamental underlying dimensions of what is happening in Myanmar; namely, a<br />
progressive deterioration of the Rohingya community.<br />
Facing this critical situation, the commitments assumed by other stakeholders are fundamental. In this<br />
sense, we count on the research of the International State Crime Initiative from Queen Mary, University<br />
of London. Based on Daniel Feierstein's analytical framework, the report solidly proves the different<br />
mechanisms targeted to weaken the Rohingya, and arrives at a convincing conclusion: that a process of<br />
genocide against the Rohingya population is underway in Myanmar.<br />
Rohingya groups also report genocide, but the fact is that apart from them very few organizations have<br />
arrived at the same conclusion. There is no doubt that it is a very delicate subject, and in this case, due<br />
to the increasing engagement with the political transition in Myanmar, we must note that is has been<br />
embarrassing for the international community to express the idea of genocide.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Notwithstanding this, with investigations like the one presented in this report from Queen Mary University<br />
of London, the evidence of the crime of ius cogens has been accumulating. At this point, the situation<br />
of the Rohingya cannot be understood without considering a possible genocide.<br />
We must acknowledge that Myanmar has been going through significant changes during recent years, and<br />
now faces a national election that is critical for its future. A peace process is ongoing, and some human<br />
rights shortcomings have been overcome, although many others remain. But the plight of the Rohingya<br />
has deteriorated rapidly. The community is cornered and traumatised, forcing them to escape in the worst<br />
possible conditions to the open sea, where many perish with the rest of the world scarcely reacting.<br />
If we could for one moment imagine how it feels to be a young Rohingya woman, we would see the real<br />
face of our civilization: denial of their existence, health deprivation, limited access to food, confinement,<br />
the fear of rape, torture and violent death. To offer them an alternative, is a legal and moral obligation we<br />
all have.<br />
Tomás Ojea Quintana,<br />
Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar (2008-14)<br />
14
Executive Summary<br />
In May 2015 scenes of desperate people stranded without food or water on captain-less boats off the<br />
coasts of Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia brought global attention to the Rohingya, 1 a 1.1 million-strong<br />
Muslim ethnic group in Rakhine state, Myanmar (formerly Burma). 2 The immediate humanitarian crisis,<br />
however, masked a much deeper and more unpalatable crisis – a genocidal persecution organised by the<br />
Myanmar State from which the Rohingya were fleeing.<br />
Reports of this persecution led researchers from the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) to<br />
explore whether or not well-documented state crimes against Myanmar’s Rohingya do indeed amount<br />
to genocide. ISCI’s detailed research found ample evidence that the Rohingya have been subjected to<br />
systematic and widespread violations of human rights, including killings, torture, rape and arbitrary detention;<br />
destruction of their homes and villages; land confiscation; forced labour; denial of citizenship;<br />
denial of the right to identify themselves as Rohingya; denial of access to healthcare, education and<br />
employment; restrictions on freedom of movement, and State-sanctioned campaigns of religious hatred.<br />
It also found compelling evidence of State-led policies, laws and strategies of genocidal persecution<br />
stretching back over 30 years, and of the Myanmar State coordinating with Rakhine ultra-nationalists,<br />
racist monks and its own security forces in a genocidal process against the Rohingya.<br />
The persecution entered a new and more devastating phase in 2012. Organised massacres left over 200<br />
Rohingya men, women and children dead. Up to 60 Rakhine were also killed during the June violence.<br />
Hundreds of homes, the vast majority belonging to Rohingya, were destroyed.<br />
Around 138,000 Rohingya were displaced and ended up in what are effectively detention camps.<br />
A further 4,500 desperate Rohingya people live in a squalid ghetto in Sittwe, Rakhine state’s capital.<br />
The Myanmar government’s escalating institutionalized discrimination against the Rohingya has allowed<br />
hate speech to flourish, encouraged Islamophobia and granted impunity to perpetrators of the violence.<br />
1 According to UNHCR estimates, between January 2012 and June 2015, some 150,000 people fled from the Myanmar/Bangladesh<br />
border area. See: UNHCR, South-East Asia Irregular Maritime Movements, January - November 2015; UNHCR, South-East<br />
Asia Mixed Maritime Movements, April - June 2015: http://www.unhcr.org/53f1c5fc9.html. Accessed 7 October 2015.<br />
2 Myanmar was renamed Burma by the country’s military regime in 1989. This report uses ‘Arakan’ and ‘Burma’ when referring<br />
to periods before 1989, and ‘Rakhine’ and ‘Myanmar’ following the renaming. The terms ‘Arakan’ and ‘Burma’ have not been<br />
changed in quoted text to retain the original meaning.<br />
15
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
The systematic, planned and targeted weakening of the Rohingya through mass violence and other<br />
measures, as well as the regime’s successive implementation of discriminatory and persecutory policies<br />
against them, amounts to a process of genocide. This process emerged in the 1970s, and has accelerated<br />
during Myanmar’s faltering transition to democracy.<br />
Part I of this report describes the history, politics and economics of the State’s persecution of the<br />
Rohingya, affording particular attention to the relationship between the Rakhine Buddhist community and<br />
the State. Part II then analyses these processes of persecution using Daniel Feierstein’s delineation of<br />
genocide’s six stages, as outlined in his book, Genocide as Social Practice. 3 Specifically, we will focus on<br />
genocide’s first four stages: 1) stigmatisation and dehumanisation; 2) harassment, violence and terror; 3)<br />
isolation and segregation; and 4) the systematic weakening of the target group.<br />
The systematic weakening process that has accompanied the dehumanisation, violence and segregation<br />
has been so successful that the Rohingya in Myanmar can be described as a people whose agency has<br />
been effectively destroyed. Those who can, flee, while those who remain endure the barest of lives.<br />
Now, the Rohingya potentially face the final two stages of genocide – mass annihilation and erasure of<br />
the group from Myanmar’s history.<br />
The report documents in detail the evidence for genocide, its historical genesis and the political, social<br />
and economic conditions in which it has emerged. It identifies the architects of the genocide as Myanmar<br />
State officials and security forces, Rakhine nationalist civil society leaders and Buddhist monks, and<br />
points to a significant degree of coordination between these agencies in the pursuit of eliminating the<br />
Rohingya from Myanmar’s political landscape.<br />
The report is based on a 12-month period of research, four of which were spent in the field between<br />
October 2014 and February 2015. The research included 176 interviews, observational fieldwork and<br />
documentary sources.<br />
ISCI concludes that genocide is taking place in Myanmar and warns of the serious and present danger of<br />
the annihilation 4 of the country’s Rohingya population.<br />
3 Feierstein, D, Genocide as Social Practice: Reorganising Society under the Nazis and Argentina’s Military Juntas,<br />
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014).<br />
4 Annihilation can be achieved not only through mass killing, but also, for example, through processes of mass exodus, population<br />
fragmentation and the social reconstruction of an ethnic identity. Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘genocide’ in the<br />
1940s, did not regard mass murder as essential to a genocidal campaign. His multidimensional understanding of genocidal<br />
destruction includes social, cultural, religious, and economic destruction.<br />
16
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
PART I: <strong>IN</strong>TRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND<br />
Rohingya child, Darpaing camp, Sittwe, November 2014<br />
18
1. <strong>IN</strong>TRODUCTION<br />
In 2012, while researching civil society resistance to State violence and corruption in Myanmar, ISCI<br />
heard reports of widespread State-sanctioned violence and discrimination against Muslims in Myanmar’s<br />
north-western Rakhine state. The massacres that occurred that year were not – as the government maintained<br />
– simply the product of ‘inter-communal violence’. Rather, they were part of a long-term, systematic<br />
strategy by national and regional governments to remove the already persecuted Rohingya minority<br />
from the State’s realm of political, social, moral and physical obligation. 5<br />
Significant steps in this strategy have included the removal in 1982 of Rohingya from the list of officially<br />
recognised ethnic minorities and stripping them of citizenship; the refusal to issue Rohingya babies<br />
with birth certificates since 1994; the government’s refusal even to use the term ‘Rohingya’ and to condemn<br />
anyone nationally or internationally who does so; the exclusion of Rohingya from the 2014 census;<br />
banning Rohingya from standing in the November 2015 elections; and the longstanding restrictions upon<br />
freedom of movement and denial of access to healthcare, employment opportunities and higher education.<br />
Myanmar has a long history of inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflict, State violence and repression,<br />
restrictions on population movement, and underdevelopment. Myanmar is religiously diverse but not<br />
religiously pluralistic. 6 The State has a dark legacy of oppression against all its ethnic minority people,<br />
including both the Rakhine and the Rohingya, but the Rohingya have been singled out for a particularly<br />
lethal form of torment. As a result, in Rakhine state, the relationship between Buddhists and Muslims has<br />
moved from mutual tolerance to open hostility – hostility primarily directed against Muslim Rohingya by<br />
Rakhine and Bamar (Burmese) 7 Buddhists.<br />
Rakhine state, the second poorest region in Myanmar, has experienced years of economic and developmental<br />
neglect. The Rakhine community, together with the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities<br />
living in the state, have suffered extreme poverty, inadequate access to education, healthcare and livelihood<br />
opportunities. As a result the Rakhine community harbours grievances against both the Myanmar<br />
5 On the concept of the ‘universe of obligation’ and its centrality to genocide, see Fein, H, Accounting for Genocide: National<br />
Responses and Jewish Victimization during the Holocaust, (New York: Free Press, 1979).<br />
6 Walton, M. J. and Hayward, S, ‘Contesting Buddhist Narratives: Democratization, Nationalism, and Communal Violence’,<br />
Policy Studies 71, (Honolulu: East-West Center, 2014), p. 7: http://www.eastwestcenter.org/publications/contestingbuddhist-narratives-democratization-nationalism-and-communal-violence-in-mya.<br />
Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
7 The term ‘Bamar’ refers to the largest of Myanmar’s ethnic groups from which the ruling elite is drawn. This is often used<br />
interchangeably with the terms ‘Burmese’ and ‘Burman’.<br />
19
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
State and its predominantly Bamar rulers, as well as the scapegoated Rohingya, or ‘illegal Bengali immigrants’<br />
as they are referred to in State and public discourse. Rakhine antagonism extends to international<br />
organisations, which are perceived as disproportionately supportive of the Rohingya.<br />
Many of the fears and grievances expressed to ISCI in interviews with members of the Rakhine community<br />
related to poverty, economic underdevelopment and State suppression of Rakhine culture. These fears,<br />
however, tended to be expressed most vehemently as a perceived Muslim threat. ISCI research suggests<br />
that the State and State-sponsored actors have manipulated and channeled legitimate Rakhine concerns<br />
into hostility towards the Rohingya in an effort to deflect anger from government policy. Myanmar State<br />
officials, nationalist Rakhine politicians and civil society leaders, and hardline Buddhist monks are all<br />
central to the scapegoating process. The result is a dangerous mix of racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia,<br />
and a narrative that dehumanises and excludes the Rohingya from both Rakhine and Myanmar’s<br />
‘universe of moral obligation.’ 8<br />
The violence that erupted in Rakhine state in June and October 2012 displaced around 147,000 people,<br />
about 138,000 of them Rohingya. The majority of the displaced Rohingya are living in what is essentially<br />
a vast detention camp complex on the outskirts of Sittwe. Others live in more isolated villages and camps<br />
in and around Sittwe, Pauk Taw, Mrauk U, Minbya and Myebon. 9 In Sittwe’s once vibrant centre, a squalid<br />
ghetto (Aung Mingalar) imprisons the city’s 4,500 remaining Rohingya. All other evidence of Muslim<br />
life, apart from the ruins of three once imposing mosques, was destroyed in the 2012 violence. The predominantly<br />
Rohingya townships of Buthidaung and Maungdaw in northern Rakhine are accessible only via<br />
special permission and are securitised zones where the Rohingya endure heavily restricted lives.<br />
Throughout 2013 and 2014, the situation for displaced and isolated Rohingya and Muslim minority<br />
Kaman 10 in Rakhine state continued to deteriorate. In June 2013, the UN Office for the Coordination of<br />
Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reported that Rakhine communities were blocking humanitarian access<br />
to at least 36,000 Rohingya in remote villages. 11 It was also reported that Rohingya were being prevented<br />
from leaving the camps and there was evidence that some had been killed by Myanmar’s security forces. 12<br />
The then UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tomás Ojea Quintana, told<br />
the UN General Assembly that he was concerned about:<br />
… the disproportionate and discriminatory restrictions on freedom of movement that remain in<br />
place for Muslim populations and that have a severe impact on their human rights, including<br />
their access to livelihoods, food, water and sanitation, health care and education. 13<br />
8 Fein, H, Accounting for Genocide. See also Fein, H, ‘Genocide: a Sociological Perspective’, Current Sociology, 38(1),<br />
Spring 1990, pp. 1-126.<br />
9 See UNOCHA map of IDP sites in Rakhine State, April 2015: http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/<br />
Affected_Map_IDP_Sites_Rakhine_OCHA_Apr2015_A0.pdf. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
10 The Muslim Kaman who hold Myanmar citizenship were not initially targeted but the assault on “Bengali immigrants” was to<br />
evolve into an assault on anyone associated with “foreigness” by dint of religion, regardless of actual legal status.<br />
11 UNOCHA, Myanmar Humanitarian Bulletin, June 2013: http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/Myanmar%20<br />
Humanitarian%20Bulletin%20June%202013.pdf. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
12 Fortify Rights, Policies of Persecution: Ending Abusive State Policies Against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, 25 February 2014,<br />
p. 34: http://www.fortifyrights.org/downloads/Policies_of_Persecution_Feb_25_Fortify_Rights.pdf. Accessed 10 October<br />
2015.<br />
13 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of human rights in Myanmar, UN General Assembly, 23 September 2013,<br />
A/68/397, para. 51: http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/MM/A-68-397_en.pdf. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
20
1. <strong>IN</strong>TRODUCTION<br />
An individual working with an aid organisation reported that the lack of basic necessities and unsanitary<br />
conditions was leading to ‘avoidable deaths’. 14 In November 2013, UNOCHA reported that more<br />
than 138,000 Rohingya and Kaman remained displaced. 15 An estimated 1 million more live and work or<br />
are interned in camps in Australia, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UK.<br />
The UNHCR estimates that between January 2012 and June 2015 over 150,000 people fled from the<br />
Myanmar/Bangladesh border area. 16 During often perilous journeys they risk death by drowning and<br />
abuse by smugglers. 17<br />
Denied citizenship, employment, health care and adequate food; discriminated against in law and policy;<br />
confined to camps and ghettos; subject to torture and extortion; and living under the daily threat of violence,<br />
the very existence of the Rohingya is precarious.<br />
Genocide: a framework<br />
State crimes involve human rights violations perpetrated by state agents in pursuit of the state’s<br />
organisational goals. 18 Genocide is a particular form of state crime that involves, as Feierstein explains,<br />
social practices that aim ‘(1) to destroy social relationships based on autonomy and cooperation by annihilating<br />
a significant part of the population…and (2) to use the terror of annihilation to establish new models<br />
of identity and social relationships among the survivors’. 19 Importantly, genocide within this framework<br />
is understood as a process, often taking place over a period of years and even decades. It does not only<br />
refer to the discrete act of physical annihilation. This approach is in keeping with the original, nuanced<br />
formulation developed by the Polish international jurist, Raphael Lemkin:<br />
Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation,<br />
except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to<br />
signify a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of essential foundations<br />
of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives<br />
of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language,<br />
national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction<br />
of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging<br />
to such groups. 20<br />
This report captures and documents the myriad strategies employed by the Myanmar State to destroy the<br />
Rohingya identity. In doing so it exposes the architects, the executioners and the accomplices.<br />
14 Cooney, L, ‘Patients Not Politics’, blog post on The Humanitarian Space, December 2013, Cited in Fortify Rights, Policies of<br />
Persecution, p. 19.<br />
15 UNOCHA, ‘Myanmar: Internal Displacement in Rakhine State as of November 30 2013’: http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/<br />
files/resources/IDPMap_OCHA_MMR_0131_Rakhine_IDP_locations_A3_30Nov2013.pdf. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
16 UNHCR, South-East Asia Irregular Maritime Movements, January – November 2014, indicates that between January 2012 and<br />
November 2014 over 120,000 had fled, URL no longer available, accessed March 2015; UNHCR, South East Asia Irregular<br />
Maritime Movements, April - June 2015, http://www.unhcr.org/53f1c5fc9.html, which claims around 31,000 fled in the first<br />
half of 2015.<br />
17 Fortify Rights, Policies of Persecution, p. 19.<br />
18 Green P and Ward T, State Crime: Governments, Violence and Corruption, (London: Pluto Press, 2004).<br />
19 Feierstein, D, Genocide as Social Practice, p. 14.<br />
20 Lemkin, R, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress, (Washington DC:<br />
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), p. 79.<br />
21
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
The systematic, targeted weakening of the Rohingya through mass violence, enforced isolation, disenfranchisement,<br />
illness and hunger, and the regime’s discriminatory and persecutory policies against the<br />
Rohingya amounts to what Maung Zarni and Alice Cowley describe as a ‘slow-burning genocide.’ 21<br />
Genocide cannot occur without preparation and commitment to an exclusionary ideology, the primary<br />
purpose of which is to garner support for action that the state will carry out at a later stage. 22 An exclusionary<br />
ideology dehumanises victims in the minds of the perpetrators, 23 enabling the latter to cope with<br />
the former’s destruction. Dehumanisation of victims is necessary because a genocidal policy depends<br />
on the complicity or participation of citizens – if the other group is not human, then killing them is not<br />
murder. 24<br />
Once the target group has been classified and is clearly identifiable, enabling a distinction between<br />
‘us’ and ‘them’, the state uses other techniques of dehumanisation, including propaganda, coercion and<br />
terror, to gain the complicity of the population. This is an important step as, in addition to a high level of<br />
cooperation between the military and state bureaucracy, the participation and complicity of the majority<br />
of the local population is a necessary prerequisite for genocide. 25<br />
The process of dehumanisation, including the use of propaganda, agitation and incitement, paves the way<br />
for mass annihilation to occur. 26 Perpetrators become indoctrinated to the point where they genuinely<br />
believe they are doing what is best for society, through purification and elimination of those seen as less<br />
than human and who therefore pose a threat to the common goal.<br />
The analysis used in this report draws on the seminal work of Gregory H. Stanton 27 and Barbara Harff<br />
and Ted Robert Gurr. 28 The findings are benchmarked against the stages of genocide outlined in the work<br />
of Daniel Feierstein. 29 The following table is adapted from Feierstein’s periodization of the genocidal<br />
process. While it is expressed as six essential and apparently sequential stages, these stages are not<br />
necessarily linear and frequently overlap.<br />
21 Zarni, M and Cowley, A, ‘The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya’, Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal, 23(3),<br />
June 2014, pp. 681 – 752. Further supporting the view that the physical and social violence and discrimination against the<br />
Rohingya amounts to genocide, on 21 September 2015, the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide listed<br />
Myanmar as the country with the highest risk of a future episode of mass killing, ahead of the Central African Republic,<br />
Nigeria and Sudan. Their assessment was based on an early warning statistical tool aimed at forecasting the risk of<br />
state-led mass killings. See: http://www.ushmm.org/confront-genocide/how-to-prevent-genocide/early-warning-project.<br />
22 Vetlesen, A, ‘Genocide: A Case for the Responsibility of the Bystander’, Journal of Peace Research, 37(4), July 2000, p. 524.<br />
23 Kuper, L, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 85.<br />
24 Stanton, G, ‘Could the Rwandan Genocide have been Prevented? Journal of Genocide Research, 6(2), 2004, p. 214.<br />
25 See, for example: Mukimbiri, J, ‘The Seven Stages of the Rwandan Genocide’, Journal of International Criminal Justice, 3(4),<br />
2005, pp.823-826; Jamieson, R, ‘Genocide and the Social Production of Immorality’, Theoretical Criminology, 3(2), 1999,<br />
p. 140.<br />
26 Dadrian, V, ‘Patterns of Twentieth Century Genocides: The Armenian, Jewish and Rwandan Cases’, Journal of Genocide<br />
Research, 6(4), December 2004, p. 515.<br />
27 Stanton, G. H., ‘The 8 Stages of Genocide,’ Genocide Watch, 1998: http://www.genocidewatch.org/aboutgenocide/<br />
8stagesofgenocide.html. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
28 Harff, B and Gurr, T. R., ‘Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases<br />
Since 1945’, International Studies Quarterly, 32(3), September 1988, pp. 359-371.<br />
29 Feierstein, D, Genocide as Social Practice.<br />
22
1. <strong>IN</strong>TRODUCTION<br />
Feierstein’s stages of genocide (adapted by ISCI)<br />
Genocidal stage<br />
Detail<br />
1 Stigmatisation The construction of a ‘negative otherness’, through dehumanisation<br />
and scapegoating, including denial of citizenship.<br />
2 Harassment, violence and Physical and psychological harassment, violence, arbitrary arrests<br />
terror<br />
and detentions, disenfranchisement and deprivation of civil rights.<br />
3 Isolation and segregation Forced demarcation of separate and isolated social, geographical,<br />
economic, political, cultural and ideological space designed to sever<br />
previously existing relations with the broader community.<br />
4 Systematic weakening Includes strategies of physical destruction of the target group<br />
through overcrowding, malnutrition, epidemics, lack of health care,<br />
torture and sporadic killings; and psychological destruction through<br />
humiliation, abuse, persistent violence and the undermining of<br />
solidarity.<br />
5 Extermination The organised physical disappearance through mass killing of those<br />
who once embodied certain types of social relations.<br />
6 Symbolic enactment The reconstruction of a new society in which the victims of<br />
genocide are physically and symbolically ‘gone’.<br />
Through the stages and processes outlined above, social relations are constructed, destroyed and<br />
reorganised until the ‘symbolic destruction’ of the victim group has been achieved. In the case of the<br />
Rohingya, this will mean their physical and symbolic removal from life in Myanmar.<br />
ISCI’s findings suggest strongly that we are witnessing Feierstein’s fourth stage of genocide – the stage<br />
prior to mass extermination.<br />
Methodology<br />
This report is based on a 12-month study funded under the UK Economic and Social Research Council’s<br />
‘Pilot Urgency Grants Mechanism’. Led by Professor Penny Green (Director of ISCI and Chair in Law<br />
and Globalisation at Queen Mary University of London), the ISCI team of three Queen Mary University<br />
researchers (Green, Thomas MacManus and Alicia de la Cour Venning) spent over four months in the<br />
field (primarily in Rakhine State but also in Yangon, Myanmar) investigating whether or not the Myanmar<br />
State’s persecution of the Rohingya constitutes genocide.<br />
The team conducted 176 formal interviews 30 with key participants. These included: individuals who<br />
identified as being of Rohingya, Rakhine, Kaman, Bamar and Maramagyi ethnicity; 31 <strong>IN</strong>GO staff; Rakhine state<br />
government officials; Rakhine civil society leaders and politicians; Rakhine and Rohingya activists; senior<br />
30 Together with many more informal conversations in the field.<br />
31 The Rakhine are an indigenous Buddhist ethnic minority and form the largest population in Rakhine state; the Kaman are a<br />
smaller Muslim minority who speak Rakhine and are the only group of Muslims recognized as a ‘national race’ by the<br />
government; the Maramagyi are a Buddhist minority who speak the Rohingya language.<br />
23
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
foreign diplomats; local and international journalists; lawyers; monks; imams; business people; local and<br />
international photographers; and academics. 32 Fieldwork also involved ethnographic observation in some<br />
40 Rohingya, Kaman and Rakhine villages and camps for IDPs (within Sittwe, Thandwe and Mrauk U<br />
districts), and in Aung Mingalar, the one Rohingya ghetto in Sittwe. The ethnographic fieldwork, which<br />
combined interviews with observation, provided the opportunity to analyse social relations in Rakhine<br />
state.<br />
The interviews were designed to elicit the experiences and perceptions of both perpetrator and victim<br />
communities and to document the state of genocidal persecution. An important goal was to penetrate<br />
and understand the sense of grievance that animates hostility against the Rohingya within the Rakhine<br />
community – many of whom we interviewed had engaged in the violence of 2012 against their longstanding<br />
neighbours. An understanding of the Rakhine sources of insecurity, which underpin nationalist<br />
and racist ideologies, is crucial to understanding underlying tensions and animosity between Buddhists<br />
and Muslims within the region.<br />
The first interviews in Rohingya, Rakhine and Kaman villages were normally conducted with the formal<br />
or informal village administrators, who granted permission to interview residents and provided basic<br />
information about the village. The less structured nature of the camps tended to mean that interviews<br />
began immediately upon entering the camps, with researchers randomly selecting those willing to speak.<br />
Women in the camps were far more reticent to speak than men, but as strong a representation of women’s<br />
voices as possible was achieved.<br />
ISCI researchers faced hostility twice: once in a Rakhine camp during an interview with a group of elders<br />
who vented their anger at the international community for discriminating in favour of the Rohingya; and<br />
once in a Rakhine village when an elder asked the researchers to leave during an interview with two<br />
young perpetrators of the 2012 violence.<br />
Informed consent was secured in every case and confidentiality assured. Most of those interviewed are<br />
not named in order to protect their identities and safety.<br />
The fieldwork was supplemented by documentary searches in Burmese and British archives, media<br />
searches and academic literature surveys. In addition, leaked documents and interview data were made<br />
available by Al Jazeera, Wikileaks, journalist Francis Wade and Fortify Rights, and are referenced as such.<br />
When ISCI researchers attempted to secure approval to visit northern Rakhine state it was denied. A<br />
translation of the pertinent discussions revealed that the team was denied access on the basis that it<br />
would most certainly speak to ‘kalar’ (a pejorative term used to refer to Muslims), though the official reason<br />
given was that the team’s security could not be guaranteed. As a result, much of what ISCI learned<br />
about northern Rakhine comes from the testimony of Rohingya who have fled the area.<br />
32 Interviews were conducted in 6 Rohingya villages, 10 Rohingya camps; 17 Rakhine villages, the 2 existing Rakhine camps;<br />
the one existing Maramagyi camp; and the 3 existing Kaman villages in Sittwe and in the Rohingya ghetto of Aung Mingalar.<br />
The interviewees comprised 71 Rakhine (57 male and 14 female), 53 Rohingya (45 male and 8 female), 13 Kaman (9 male and<br />
4 female), and 11 Maramagyi (6 male and 5 female). In addition, 18 international journalists, photographers, international NGO<br />
workers and diplomats, 10 monks (the transcripts of 5 acquired through Al Jazeera), and a number of state officials, business<br />
people, developers, politicians, civil society and political activists and local journalists were also interviewed.<br />
24
1. <strong>IN</strong>TRODUCTION<br />
As far as ISCI is aware, the data gathered for this report is unique in its depth, breadth and texture,<br />
and reflects the only systematic academic fieldwork on the question of genocide in Rakhine state. The<br />
research provides a strong evidence base for understanding what is happening to the Rohingya, and for<br />
determining whether or not this is a genocide.<br />
25
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Rakhine men fishing off the coast near Thandwe<br />
26
2. BACKGROUND<br />
2. BACKGROUND<br />
Rakhine state<br />
Rakhine state extends some 560km along the northernmost part of Myanmar’s coastline and borders<br />
Bangladesh to the north-west. It is separated from Myanmar’s central, low-lying landmass by the Yoma<br />
mountain range.<br />
The population of Rakhine state is around 3.2 million 33 with Rakhine Buddhists comprising an estimated<br />
2.1 million and Rohingya Muslims just over a million. 34 The exact number of Rohingya is impossible to<br />
verify as they were excluded from participating in the 2014 census unless they registered as ‘Bengali’,<br />
which very few did. The Rakhine, also known as Arakanese, are an ethnic minority themselves in Myanmar,<br />
making up around 6 per cent of the national population.<br />
Most Rohingya live in the townships 35 of Maungdaw and Buthidaung in northern Rakhine state, where<br />
they form a large majority population. Rakhine state is also home to a small number of Chin, Kaman, Mro,<br />
Khami, Dainet and Maramagyi ethnic minorities.<br />
Competing histories surround the origins and existence of the Rohingya ethnicity in Myanmar. Carlos<br />
Sardina Galache explains:<br />
Burmese and Rakhine nationalists often accuse the Rohingya of falsifying their history in order<br />
to advance their claims for ethnicity… Rohingya historians tend to minimize or ignore altogether<br />
the importance of the migration of labourers to Arakan from Bengal during colonial times. 36<br />
33 Total population of Rakhine state is 3,188,963 (2,098,963 enumerated, 1,090,000 not enumerated (i.e. estimated)). Figures<br />
taken from the April 2014 census, which excluded the Rohingya. See: Republic of the Union of Myanmar, ‘The Population and<br />
Housing Census of Myanmar, 2014: Summary of the Provisional Results’, Department of Population, Milistry of Immigration<br />
and Population, August 2014: http://countryoffice.unfpa.org/myanmar/drive/SummmaryoftheProvisionalResults.pdf.<br />
Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
34 According to the estimate of uncounted persons in the 2014 census, the total number of Rohingya in Rakhine state is<br />
estimated at over 1 million. See: Human Rights Watch, ‘Burma: Government Plan Would Segregate Rohingya: Forced<br />
Resettlement, Discriminatory Citizenship Creates Dangers’, 3 October 2014: https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/10/03/<br />
burma-government-plan-would-segregate-rohingya. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
35 A Township is an administrative subdivision of a district and incorporates a number of villages.<br />
36 Galache, C S, ‘Rohingya and national identities in Burma’, AsiaPacific, New Mandala, 22 September 2014: http://asiapacific.<br />
anu.edu.au/newmandala/2014/09/22/the-rohingya-and-national-identities-in-burma/. Accessed 10 October 2015 .<br />
27
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Independent historians, however, document a longstanding Muslim presence in Rakhine state, which is<br />
corroborated by ancient mosques and the use of coins and Islamic titles by Arakan rulers. The origins<br />
of ‘Rohingya’ terminology are unclear, but the fact remains that the Rohingya and their chosen ethnic<br />
designation were accepted by the Burmese State in the 1950s. The first President of Burma, Sao Shwe<br />
Thaike, a Shan, claimed in 1959 that the ‘Muslims of Arakan certainly belong to the indigenous races of<br />
Burma. If they do not belong to the indigenous races, we also cannot be taken as indigenous races.’ 37<br />
The Rohingya were issued citizenship/ID cards and granted the right to vote under Burma’s first postindependence<br />
Prime Minister, U Nu, and Rohingya held important government positions as civil servants.<br />
In the 1960s, the official Burma Broadcasting Service relayed a Rohingya-language radio programme<br />
three times a week as part of its minority language programming, and the term ‘Rohingya’ was used in<br />
journals and school text-books until the late 1970s. 38<br />
During British colonisation when India and Burma were ruled together, migration of people from<br />
India’s predominantly Muslim state of Bengal to Burma (mainly to Arakan state) increased as the British<br />
sought to cultivate rice production. Many of these seasonal migrants settled permanently, enlarging the<br />
pre-existing Rohingya community. Following the departure of the British, further migration is likely to<br />
have taken place across what is now the Myanmar-Bangladesh border area. Rakhine also migrated to<br />
Bangladesh 39 , a reflection both of the porous nature of the border and that immigration between Bangladesh<br />
and Myanmar was not unilinear. Whatever the exact history, the origins of the Rohingya community<br />
in Myanmar has been used to deflect attention from the State’s undeniable and systematic persecution<br />
of the Rohingya.<br />
ISCI’s fieldwork reveals a persistent memory in some sections of the Rakhine community of historical<br />
animosity between the communities, for example massacres of both groups in 1942-43 in the context of<br />
World War Two, when the Rohingya fought with the British and the Rakhine with the Japanese. These<br />
historic grievances have been resuscitated in a series of State-condoned stereotypes that brand the<br />
Rohingya as terrorists and illegal immigrants intent on Islamising Rakhine state through a campaign of<br />
population growth. The increasing polarisation of the two communities – into the majority, ‘indigenous’<br />
Rakhine Buddhist ‘us’, and the minority ‘interloper’ Muslim Rohingya ‘them’ 40 – has fostered a dangerous<br />
social landscape.<br />
Rakhine oppression<br />
The Myanmar State has long oppressed the Rakhine, themselves a minority ethnic group within Myanmar.<br />
Testimony gathered by ISCI suggests this includes the suppression of the memory, practice and exploration<br />
of Rakhine culture, language and history. Than Mrint, a Rakhine intellectual and Arakan National<br />
Party (ANP) politician, said:<br />
37 As cited by Rogers, B, ‘A friend’s appeal to Burma’, Mizzima, 19 June, 2012: http://archive-2.mizzima.com/edop/<br />
commentary/7349-a-friends-appeal-to-burma.html. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
38 Lwin, N. S., ‘Making Rohingya stateless’, AsiaPacific, New Mandala, 29 October 2012: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/<br />
newmandala/2012/10/29/making-rohingya-statelessness/. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
39 Majid, M, The Rakhaines, (Dhaka: Mowla Brothers, 2005).<br />
40 Stanton, G, ‘Could the Rwandan Genocide have been Prevented?’ p. 214.<br />
28
2. BACKGROUND<br />
There are many dangers to our indigenous identity. Our land is very ancient with Rakhine people.<br />
Without Rakhine people, this place is a dead place, just historical monuments. Our history is big.<br />
Myanmar has many ethnicities – a few have disappeared, the Phyu (Pyu) people have disappeared.<br />
Our inferiority is in many places – particularly in economic development, education, and economy. 41<br />
Unlike other ethnic minority-populated regions of Myanmar, Arakan was one of five powerful kingdoms<br />
of South East Asia until the Burmese occupation of 1784. 42 Its decline during British rule (1826-1948)<br />
accelerated under the Burmese military dictatorship (1962-2010). Rakhine Buddhists described to ISCI<br />
systematic and ongoing oppression by the ruling Bamar elite, who many perceive as oppressors committed<br />
to the erosion of Rakhine culture and identity. One campaigner against the erosion of Rakhine culture<br />
said:<br />
We Rakhine have had many enemies, but mostly the Burmese… There are so many dangers<br />
for our people, we must protect, we can’t think about human rights or other things, we are<br />
struggling not to have our identity and community overrun… We have no future, we don’t see a future.<br />
We must defend our community… We are afraid of losing our identity, our race, our language…<br />
We need federalism. 43<br />
Some Rakhine interviewees even described the nature of their oppression as ‘genocide’. During discussions<br />
following the boat crisis in May 2015, Zaw Aye Maung, the Yangon Region Ethnic Rakhine<br />
Affairs Minister and Chairman of the ANP, claimed that if genocide was taking place in Rakhine state then it<br />
was against ethnic Rakhine Buddhists. He said, ‘We are now in danger of being overrun by these Bangladeshis’.<br />
44 Similarly, an ANP spokesperson said: ‘I feel like Rakhine will disappear from this land if they<br />
grant Bengalis citizenship.’ 45<br />
Economic and developmental neglect, together with oppression and discrimination following the military<br />
coup led by General Ne Win in 1962, 46 have had a devastating effect on Rakhine state and social relations<br />
between communities. Levels of poverty contrast starkly with the state’s abundance of natural resources<br />
and its strategic geopolitical location, both of which are exploited by foreign powers. Rakhine state is<br />
home to the Shwe Gas project, for example, which involves natural gas extraction off the coast and<br />
generates vast revenues for the military and for China. In June 2015, U Min Min Oo, a director of the<br />
International Relations and Information Division of the Ministry of Energy, announced that gas exports<br />
earn the Myanmar government over US$170 million a month – 40 per cent of the country’s income. 47 The<br />
US$214 million, India-funded Kaladan Transport Project, built to connect northern India with the Kolkata<br />
region is another example of the government’s exploitation of Rakhine state that will bring little immediate<br />
benefit to those living in the state.<br />
41 Deputy Chair of the Culture and Monuments Trust, interviewed on 26 January 2015 in Mrauk U.<br />
42 Hall, D.G.E., A History of South-East Asia, 3rd edition, (London: Macmillan, 1968), p. 389.<br />
43 Interviewed on 25 and 26 January 2015 in Mrauk U.<br />
44 McLaughlin, T and Belford, A, ‘Myanmar says persecution not the cause of migrant crisis’, Reuters, 4 June 2015:<br />
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/04/us-asia-migrants-idUSKBN0OK11320150604?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_<br />
medium=email&utm_term=%2AMorning%20Brief&utm_campaign=New%20Campaign. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
45 Interviewed on 21 January 2015 in Sittwe.<br />
46 Ne Win, a military commander, was Prime Minister 1958-1960 and 1962-1974, and Head of State 1962-1981.<br />
47 See Earthrights International: http://www.earthrights.org/campaigns/shwe-gas-campaign. Accessed 7 October 2015.<br />
According to Myanmar’s Ministry of Energy, the Government ‘earns US$170 million monthly from gas exports’, As reported by<br />
the Myanmar Times, 15 June 2015: http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/business/15034-govt-earns-us-170-million-monthlyfrom-gas-exports.html.<br />
Accessed 7 October 2015.<br />
29
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
A common feeling expressed by the Rakhine is that they suffer from discrimination and neglect under<br />
Bamar rule. A local civil society leader, referring to the fact that Rakhine State’s former chief minister,<br />
Maung Maung Ohn, was both Bamar and a former general, said: ‘We feel that we are being ruled by the<br />
army’. 48 He elaborated:<br />
We feel like we are under neo-colonialism because everything is controlled by the Burmese –<br />
education, economics, everything. In all townships, the most important positions are for<br />
Burmese. Township officers here in Mrauk U are all Burmese. The Arakanese feel like we are<br />
still living under colonialism. 49<br />
In early 2015, Rakhine civilians, accused of links with the outlawed rebel Arakan Army, 50 were harassed,<br />
arrested and tortured under Myanmar’s notorious Unlawful Association Act. Tensions were raised when,<br />
following clashes between the tatmadaw (Myanmar’s armed forces) and the Arakan Army in April 2015,<br />
the tatmadaw was accused of blocking aid to displaced Rakhine. 51<br />
Rakhine activists have also been imprisoned for peacefully protesting against the Shwe Gas pipeline. 52<br />
Several interviewees expressed concern about the project and described forms of resistance to it.<br />
According to one:<br />
The gas from the Shwe Gas pipeline, US$1.5 billion per year for 30 years, it’s all going to China.<br />
We demonstrated, made statements… but nothing happened. The benefits from the pipeline are<br />
nothing for us. All profits are going to Nay Pyi Taw. We have many natural resources – seafood/<br />
fishing, marble, titanium, bamboo forests, rice paddy and gas, but we’re still the second poorest<br />
state. 53<br />
The Secretary of a Rakhine civil society organisation elaborated on the detrimental impact the pipeline<br />
is having:<br />
Recently, the Rakhine Women’s Network has been working with [Rakhine] labourers who have<br />
been working on the Shwe gas pipeline under terrible conditions. They have no shelter, no<br />
toilets, no water. 54<br />
48 Senior Member of a Rakhine civil society organisation based in Sittwe, interviewed on 12 November 2014 in Sittwe.<br />
49 Interviewed on 25 January 2015 in Mrauk U.<br />
50 The Arakan Army was formed in 2009 and is based primarily in Kachin state. Its mission is ‘to protect our Arakan people,<br />
and to establish peace and justice and freedom and development’. See: Ye Mon, ‘Rakhine chief minister hits out at army over<br />
fighting’, Myanmar Times, 1 May 2015: http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/14221-rakhine-chief-ministerhits-out-at-army-over-fighting.html.<br />
Accessed 10 October 2015. See also: BNI, ‘Army accused of torture in Rakhine state’,<br />
Mizzima, 1 May 2015: http://mizzima.com/news-domestic/army-accused-torture-rakhine-state. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
51 Nyein Nyein, ‘Burma Army Blocked Aid to Fleeing Arakan Villagers: Relief Group’, The Irrawaddy, 22 April 2015.<br />
http://www.irrawaddy.org/burma/burma-army-blocked-aid-to-fleeing-arakan-villagers-relief-group.html.<br />
Accessed 20 October 2015.<br />
52 See: ‘Burma: Release Ten Arakanese Activists, Amend Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Processions Law’, Shwe Gas<br />
Movement, 29 September 2013: http://www.shwe.org/burma-release-ten-arakanese-activists-amend-peaceful-assemblyand-peaceful-processions-law/.<br />
Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
53 Interviewed on 25 January 2015 in Mrauk U.<br />
54 Interviewed on 24 November 2014 in Sittwe.<br />
30
2. BACKGROUND<br />
The perceived Bamar occupation and economic neglect of Rakhine state has contributed to a particularly<br />
extreme form of nationalist scape-goating among Rakhine which frames Muslims, and the Rohingya in<br />
particular, as the primary economic and cultural threat. For example, a Rakhine elder told ISCI: ‘There are<br />
more jobs now because there are no Muslims anymore’. 55<br />
Rakhine civil society<br />
Rakhine civil society is still in its infancy. It combines traditional human rights activism around land,<br />
labour, environment and development issues, with an extreme form of anti-Rohingya propagandising.<br />
ISCI found that the Myanmar government has successfully manipulated the Rakhine into believing that<br />
their primary enemy is not the State but the Rohingya. As one Rakhine interviewee said, ‘The government<br />
have told us – “we are not your enemy, the Bengali are your enemy”.’ 56<br />
Some civil society activists admitted that they had been distracted by the ‘Bengali issue’ to the extent<br />
that their campaigns against land grabbing, forced evictions and economic exploitation had been marginalised.<br />
One prominent Rakhine human rights activist spoke of the Myanmar government’s manipulation of<br />
the conflict to advance economic exploitation:<br />
Sometimes the government manipulates the Rakhine, you know? Because they want to continue<br />
the projects, like the gas pipeline project, oil pipeline. We have a lot of campaigns, so they just<br />
manipulate the Bengali conflict, then everyone worries about the refugees and then nobody<br />
cares about the Kaladan project! These projects, even though we have conflict here they continue.<br />
The government diverts our attention!... The government creates trouble between the two<br />
communities. It is also because of the development projects. Their strategy is for the regional<br />
development projects like Shwe Gas Project and Kaladan Project… we demand a share in the<br />
profits, you know, from the government. We have had campaigns against these projects, like our<br />
24 hour electricity campaigns… This campaign was growing, spreading from Sittwe, Kyauk<br />
Phyu, to other regions… and the government is using the conflict, creating problems between<br />
the communities, and using this to take the profits… 57<br />
ISCI also found that Rakhine civil society organisations and the state’s dominant political party, the ANP,<br />
to be closely aligned. For example, one activist and member of the ANP reported: ‘There are different<br />
organisations in Mrauk U, but they are all the same. If we do a movement, we do it all together.’ 58<br />
Fears associated with the erosion of Rakhine culture and history exacerbate the perceived Muslim threat.<br />
Rakhine consistently expressed concern regarding illegal immigration from Bangladesh, which they blame<br />
on a porous border managed by corrupt officials, a densely populated neighbour, Bamar dominance over<br />
the Rakhine, and tensions between communities at the border area. Extracts from interviews with civil<br />
society activists give some sense of the feelings:<br />
55 Interviewed on 6 December 2014 in Sittwe.<br />
56 Interview conducted with a group of male Rakhine activists in Sittwe, 14 February 2014.<br />
57 Senior Member of a Rakhine civil society organisation based in Sittwe, interviewed on 12 November 2014 in Sittwe.<br />
58 Interviewed on 25 January 2015 in Mrauk U.<br />
31
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
• The Bengali are dominant globally and they are assisted by Burmese intelligence, soldiers and<br />
local police… the Bengali business people, they want to get some business incentives, business<br />
opportunities, so they pay money, a lot of money, so the authorities just accept. And they don't<br />
have a system, or any plan for the border fence or for the control of the migration. So a lot of<br />
people come in and settle down in the Buthidaung and Maungdaw areas. 59<br />
• There are too many illegal immigrants coming across the border… According to some<br />
statistics, Maungdaw is 98% Muslim and only 2% Rakhine. Buthidaung is 95% Muslim and<br />
only 5% Rakhine. Immigration data from the government is not reliable… I got information<br />
from my close friends that are in government that there are meetings in Thailand between<br />
Islamic groups who even talked about the date Myanmar will become Muslim… Documents<br />
show that they have a plan to make Myanmar an Islamic state... The person who told me this<br />
is a Rakhine man in government. He’s a member of the state government. 60<br />
• Illegal immigrants are extremist Muslims. 61 The main intention of the Muslims is to invade our<br />
land, Muslim people want the Arakan land to become a Muslim land… I have no idea how to<br />
solve the conflict but I don’t want to live with Muslim people. Malaysia and Afghanistan used to<br />
be Buddhist lands, same with Indonesia, but now they’ve become Muslim. 62<br />
• They [Bengalis] have a plan that Mayu district becomes an autonomous region, you know,<br />
a separate country or separate region. For example they have a plan, for Mayu district of<br />
Arakan state and the Chittagong hill tract from Bangladesh. They have a plan for an independent<br />
Islamic state, Akistan! 63<br />
A local civil society leader claimed that a lack of law enforcement and corrupt Bamar officials in the Mayu<br />
district area has contributed to increased tensions between communities:<br />
Many rape cases and other social violations, they are all crimes that have happened. So when<br />
Rakhine people have to go to the township town, to buy food or something, then they have to<br />
cross through the Bengali villages. The Bengali youth want to see the Buddhist girls and you<br />
know, shout abuse or sometimes physically abuse them. It has happened! For many, many<br />
years. 64<br />
Given the almost complete segregation of the Rakhine and Rohingya communities in Sittwe and Mrauk<br />
U, the Rakhine there are now exposed only to the unadulterated anti-Muslim propaganda of the State,<br />
Buddhist leaders and Rakhine nationalists. Where once the lived experience of shared community<br />
resources, friendships, working partnerships and multicultural education all combined to counter stigmatisation,<br />
those positive social controls no longer exist. The Rakhine encountered by ISCI voiced virulent<br />
racism in their own media and in interviews, stereotyping Muslims as rude, dishonest, ‘like animals’ and<br />
having links to terrorism. One nationalist journal contained the following passage:<br />
59 Senior Member of a Rakhine civil society organisation based in Sittwe, interviewed on 12 November 2014 in Sittwe.<br />
60 Secretary of a Rakhine civil society organisation, interview conducted in Sittwe on 24 November 2014.<br />
61 ECC leader, elder Than Tun, interviewed in Sittwe on 22 November 2014.<br />
62 Rakhine woman, 40 years old, interviewed in a Rakhine village, Sittwe, on 4 December 2015.<br />
63 Senior member of a Rakhine civil society organisation based in Sittwe, 12 November 2014, Sittwe.<br />
64 Ibid.<br />
32
2. BACKGROUND<br />
… it is time people know that these so-called Myanmar Muslims who are inside the country –<br />
these human animals who are only lying in wait to ask for their rights – and the Muslims in the<br />
entire world are on the side of the Rohingya people and feel hurt. 65<br />
An internally displaced Rakhine man in his forties said:<br />
The conflict is mainly because of the Muslims, they have been brainwashed by those Muslim<br />
religious leaders, they always follow their instructions and in Muslim communities they even<br />
rape their own daughters... We can live together with other ethnic groups whether it is Chinese<br />
or others, Kachin, but Muslim – not like that, they are just very arrogant. We cannot live together<br />
with Muslim community, they are very scary… they are like animals, they are like dogs. The<br />
Muslim people… are trying to make the whole war begin, they are just trying to Islamise the<br />
whole world… I hate the Muslim people. 66<br />
A 43-year-old Rakhine woman said:<br />
I heard from Muslim workers who used to work in the village, that ‘kalar’ leaders teach them to<br />
live and to kill. I don’t know what the government should do about the situation. It’s even worse<br />
because more Bengalis are coming across from Bangladesh so the population is increasing.<br />
‘Kalar’ workers told me this. 67<br />
Another woman reported:<br />
I asked a Muslim man, ‘what do you do in the mosque’? And he replied, ‘our religious teachers<br />
told us that we had to kill Rakhine people’. 68<br />
65 Toe Tet Yay [Development] Journal (RNDP) - Volume 2. No. 12, 2012 November, Page 9, copy available on file with authors,<br />
obtained from Al Jazeera.<br />
66 Interviewed in a Rakhine IDP camp, Sittwe, 25 November 2014.<br />
67 Interviewed in a Rakhine village, Sittwe, 28 November 2014.<br />
68 Rakhine woman, interview in a Rakhine village, Sittwe, 6 December 2014.<br />
33
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Rakhine mobilisation<br />
A mosque now under the control of the Myanmar military, downtown Sittwe, January 2015<br />
In October 2013 Rakhine leaders lobbied the President to implement a number of initiatives deemed<br />
necessary to the development of Rakhine state. 69 Underpinning the economic and development concerns<br />
of these submissions were core demands for the further isolation, segregation and restriction of<br />
Rohingya rights. The following extracts from the submissions give a sense of the nature of the lobbying:<br />
• I would like to request the parliament to enact a law earlier in order to prevent the population<br />
of illegal Bengalis whose population are increasing due to the marriage and having the<br />
children unsystematic ways which are not suitable with the cultural norms of human beings. 70<br />
• Providing the right to vote to the foreigners who sneaked into Myanmar without entirely<br />
being same race, religion and tradition who cannot speak Myanmar language and the other<br />
ethnic languages (at all) will be similar with handing over the sovereignty of the country to<br />
69 Leaked document 1: Submissions presented to Myanmar President Thein Sein by letter, 15 October 2013, by representatives<br />
of Rakhine state. Seen and sanctioned by Shwe Mann. Leaked to Fortify Rights; acquired by ISCI researchers from Al<br />
Jazeera.<br />
70 Leaked document 1, submission A: Submitted by U Thar Pwin (Lawyer), ‘Peace and stability of Rakhine state and the<br />
importance of geo-politics’.<br />
34
2. BACKGROUND<br />
the foreigners… [Myanmar’s leaders] should consider entirely terminating the right to vote<br />
with illegal white cards [see glossary]. 71<br />
• The situations of Rakhine state and Kachin state in Myanmar are very good projects for NGOs...<br />
Until now, there are over 80 <strong>IN</strong>GOs. They just assist IDP of indigenous (Rakhine) on the surface<br />
and give much assistance to Bengali population. It was said that in some boxes, there are<br />
explosive materials which can be transformed into the weapons. They were primarily based<br />
for humanitarian aid but later, they are involving in requesting citizenship for Bengali, and<br />
to gain Rohingya race with political willingness. They say from their mouths “humanitarian”<br />
but without doing humanitarian, they discriminate and their main strategy is to maintain the<br />
conflict in order to get good jobs, salary and opportunities. Therefore, NGOs and <strong>IN</strong>GOs have<br />
to be under supervision of central government and Rakhine state government. 72<br />
The government appears to have acceded to several of these anti-Rohingya demands or those demands<br />
accord with the government’s own policy agenda. For example, it passed the Population Control Healthcare<br />
Bill in May 2015, widely believed to have been drafted specifically to restrict Rohingya reproduction<br />
rights. 73 It also disenfranchised the holders of white cards (temporary ID issued mainly to Rohingya that<br />
do not confer citizenship) and in March 2013 formally established the ECC (the Emergency Coordination<br />
Centre) to regulate humanitarian activities, perceived by the Rakhine as disproportionately supporting<br />
Rohingya.<br />
Worrying submissions that remain as yet unaddressed include calls to resettle Rohingya living in Aung<br />
Mingalar ghetto and in camps near Sittwe University; combating terrorism through the establishment of<br />
peoples’ militias, particularly along border areas in northern Rakhine state; and the construction of a wall<br />
along the Myanmar-Bangladesh border:<br />
• There is only [one] village in [Sittwe] downtown namely Aung Mingalar. The population of<br />
that village is over 4,000. It is not convenient for the town people (Rakhine Buddhists) to go<br />
and come around there because the security forces have deployed. If the security forces are<br />
withdrawn, that village is a wood fire that can burst anytime. That is why; we want to relocate<br />
that village to the Bengali areas… This issue is always threatening the stability of the region.<br />
We want the [central government] to separate and relocate these Bengalis anyway. 74<br />
• There are illegal Bengali villages along the [Sittwe] road of colleges and University. It is not<br />
secure for the students and any problem can emerge any time. So, it is necessary to consider<br />
the submission to relocate Bengali villages to other places. 75<br />
• I would like to request to form militias by the military supervision with the suitable numbers.<br />
So, the physical security and emotional security of Rakhine people will be increased in that<br />
way and the stability will be increased. 76<br />
71 Leaked document 1, submission C: Summary findings of submissions presented to Myanmar President Thein Sein,<br />
15 October 2013.<br />
72 Ibid.<br />
73 Huma Rights Watch, ‘Burma: Reject Discriminatory Population Bill’, 16 May 2015: https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/05/16/<br />
burma-reject-discriminatory-population-bill. Accessed 12 October 2015.<br />
74 Leaked document 1, submission A.<br />
75 Leaked document 1, submission D: U Zaw Myo Naing, ‘Submission by a student for the Rakhine State’.<br />
76 Leaked document 1, submission A.<br />
35
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
• Today, Bengalis’ intruding threatened the security and sovereignty of the country. They are<br />
doing systematically terrorism and colony by the population. In fact, some terrorist overseas<br />
organizations are providing the trainings to the young Bengalis by brainwashing and trying<br />
to plan terrorism in many ways. So, Myanmar government should pay more attention over<br />
Bengali colony and the plans of terrorism very carefully… The frontiers of the western Myanmar<br />
and the coasts from which Bengalis can enter should be covered by the high walls in<br />
order to prevent illegal immigrants. 77<br />
ISCI discovered a leaked document apparently adopted by the regime in 1988 which reveals the State<br />
Peace and Development Council’s (SPDC) commitment to eliminating the Rohingya from Myanmar.<br />
SPDC Rohingya Extermination Plan adopted in 1988 78<br />
1. The Muslims (Rohingyas) are not to be provided with citizenship cards by identifying them as insurgents.<br />
2. To reduce the population growth of the Rohingyas by gradual imposition of restrictions on their marriages<br />
and by application of all possible methods of oppression and suppression against them.<br />
3. To strive for the increase in Buddhist population to be more than the number of Muslim people by way of<br />
establishing Natala villages in Arakan with Buddhist settlers from different townships and from out of the<br />
country.<br />
4. To allow them temporary movement from village to village and township to township only with Form 4<br />
(which is required by the foreign nationals for travel), and to totally ban them travelling to Sittwe, the<br />
capital of Arakan State.<br />
5. To forbid higher studies (university education) to the Rohingyas.<br />
6. No Muslim is to be appointed in government services.<br />
7. To forbid them from ownership of lands, shops and buildings. Any such properties under their existing<br />
ownership must be confiscated for distribution among the Buddhists. All their economic activities must be<br />
stopped.<br />
8. To ban construction, renovation, repair and roofing of the mosques, Islamic religious schools and dwelling<br />
houses of the Rohingyas.<br />
9. To try secretly to convert the Muslims into Buddhism.<br />
10. Whenever there is a case between Rakhine and Muslim the court shall give verdict in favour of Rakhine;<br />
when the case is between Muslim themselves the court shall favour the rich against the poor Muslim so<br />
that the latter leaves the country with frustration.<br />
11. Mass killing of the Muslim is to be avoided in order not to invite the attention of the Muslim countries.<br />
(The Rohingya population was 1.2 million in 1952 and, according to UNHCR report it has been reduced<br />
to 774,000 in 2008).<br />
Translation from Burmese, undated document<br />
77 Leaked document 1, submission B: Submitted by Arakan Human Rights and Development Organization (AHRDO).<br />
78 Leaked document 2: SPDC Rohingya Extermination Plan, adopted in 1988 on the basis of the proposals submitted by<br />
Col. Tha Kyaw (a Rakhine), Chairman of the National Unity Party.<br />
36
2. BACKGROUND<br />
What is so striking and alarming about the ‘Extermination Plan’ cited above is that at least 7 of the first 8<br />
elements of the plan have been effectively instituted.<br />
ISCI witnessed high levels of anger within the Rakhine community over perceived support by the inter-<br />
national community for the Rohingya. The anger has been expressed most visibly through:<br />
• Emergency Coordination Centre (ECC) established at the demand of Rakhine leaders,<br />
ostensibly to monitor delivery of aid to IDP camps to ensure Rakhine Buddhists and<br />
Rohingya Muslims receive an equal share;<br />
• protests, particularly in Yangon and Sittwe against plans by the OIC to open an office<br />
in Myanmar; UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s use of the word ‘Rohingya’; visits by<br />
Yanghee Lee, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar;<br />
parliament’s decision to give holders of white ID cards (mainly Rohingya) the right to vote<br />
in 2015; 79<br />
• violent attacks on UN and <strong>IN</strong>GO offices in Sittwe in 2014 and an orchestrated campaign<br />
against <strong>IN</strong>GOs seen to be disproportionately assisting the Rohingya, which resulted in, for<br />
example, the expulsion of MSF in 2014.<br />
Emergency Coordination Centre<br />
In late March 2014, and in the immediate aftermath of the Rakhine attacks on <strong>IN</strong>GO offices, the Rakhine<br />
state government, with the support of the State government, operationalised the ECC in Sittwe. Chaired<br />
by the State Security Minister, the ECC is supposed to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance<br />
in Rakhine. Interviews with ECC elders, however, revealed entirely different objectives on the part of<br />
those who lead the Rakhine ECC. These include monitoring the international community and its perceived<br />
‘one-sided’ humanitarian support for the Rohingya; and ensuring that the international community<br />
directs development aid towards the Rakhine. As Thar Pwin, one of the three Rakhine elders on the ECC,<br />
declared:<br />
We monitor them – one of the motivations is to ensure equal distribution 50-50. For Rakhine<br />
we don’t need <strong>IN</strong>GOs. But the <strong>IN</strong>GOs are interested in the Bengalis. Yes the Rakhine don’t need<br />
them but the Bengalis do – it’s a pressure the government can’t resist. 80<br />
When asked how the monitoring took place, Thar Pwin revealed the close ties between Rakhine natio-<br />
nalist civil society organisations and the ECC:<br />
Every township has ECC representatives and the local CSOs and ECC work together to monitor<br />
the <strong>IN</strong>GOs. In Mrauk U, for example, there was an issue with the distribution of fertilizer. The<br />
79 The decision was quickly reversed:, Nyein Nyein, ‘Thein Sein Pushes Referendum Suffrage for White Card Holders’,<br />
The Irrawaddy, 22 December 2014: http://www.irrawaddy.org/election/news/thein-sein-pushes-referendum-suffrage-forwhite-card-holders.<br />
Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
80 Interview with Thar Pwin, in Sittwe, 23 January 2015.<br />
37
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] distributed 200 bags of fertilizer to five<br />
Rakhine villages and 180 bags of fertilizer to three Bengali villages – this is not 50-50 distribution.<br />
In this case the CSOs will block the work of the <strong>IN</strong>GOs. 81<br />
That these objectives are explicitly motivated by antagonism to perceived <strong>IN</strong>GO support of the Rohingya<br />
and by organised Rakhine racism was exemplified by another ECC elder, Than Tun:<br />
The whole Muslim community here are illegal immigrants, they are Bengalis. The UN, <strong>IN</strong>GOs<br />
and international media are identifying illegal Bengalis as residents. Rohingya is a fake identity.<br />
The UN and <strong>IN</strong>GOs are helping the Muslim community to take over land in Rakhine state. The<br />
Muslim population is increasing but the UN are still helping them to survive. 82<br />
Whether the ECC has any real impact on the work of the <strong>IN</strong>GOs is disputed by the <strong>IN</strong>GO community, but it<br />
is clear that the ECC provides the most racist elements within Rakhine civil society with a high degree of<br />
state and organisational legitimacy in its anti-Rohingya programme.<br />
Protests<br />
So Naing from the Rakhine Social Network, one of the organisers of an anti-Rohingya protest held in<br />
Sittwe on 14 June 2015, described their role:<br />
We protested peacefully to show our disappointment and concern, and deliver a strong message<br />
to the government of Myanmar, UN and <strong>IN</strong>GOs that these migrants must be repatriated immediately<br />
and that we don’t accept them in the land of Rakhine. 83<br />
Protest flyers referred to ‘migrants’ as ‘kalar’ and called on Rakhine people to ‘protect the future of<br />
Rakhine’ under banners that read ‘we are under attack from terrorist so called boat people’. 84<br />
Zaw Win, a protest leader in Buthidaung, said around 1,000 people protested there. He added:<br />
The Rakhine community fear conflict may erupt if these migrants stay longer in Rakhine. That’s<br />
why we are protesting. 85<br />
Protesting can be a dangerous exercise in Myanmar; considerable numbers of student protestors and<br />
land activists are languishing behind bars. To obtain permission for such protests requires lengthy<br />
bureaucratic procedures. By contrast, anti-Rohingya protests regularly happen without sanction from the<br />
authorities. CSO leaders in Sittwe told ISCI that permission is readily granted for these protests through<br />
81 Ibid.<br />
82 Interview with Than Tun, in Sittwe, 22 November 2014.<br />
83 ‘500 March in Anti-Rohingya Protest’, DVB, 14 June 2015: http://www.dvb.no/news/500-march-in-anti-muslim-protestburma-myanmar-rohingya/52476.<br />
Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
84 Ibid.<br />
85 Mandalay, Z, ‘Rakhine Buddhists protest against helping Rohingya migrants’, UCA News, 15 June 2015: http://www.ucanews.<br />
com/news/rakhine-buddhists-protest-against-helping-rohingya-migrants/73779. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
38
2. BACKGROUND<br />
a simple phone call to the state minister’s office, 86 and has become much easier to obtain in recent years.<br />
One said:<br />
Before we had to go through so many levels of bureaucracy, for example for the OIC [Organisation<br />
of Islamic Cooperation] protest in September 2012 against their plans to open an office.<br />
But now we don’t even need to ask, we just call them [state government], and tell them we’re<br />
going to protest. We speak to the state government often, we have a kind of relationship, ‘give<br />
and take’, so this is helpful. 87<br />
Rakhine nationalists are free to express hate speech and to publicly challenge international organisations<br />
seeking to offer humanitarian assistance to Rohingya IDPs. Given the climate of ethno-religious tension,<br />
this is tantamount to the authorities green-lighting violent intolerance and religious hatred.<br />
Attacks on the UN and <strong>IN</strong>GOs<br />
Rakhine nationalists go as far as to claim that UN agencies are controlled by Muslim countries driven by<br />
an agenda to Islamise the globe. The following extracts from interviews highlight the hostility expressed<br />
towards the international community/<strong>IN</strong>GOs:<br />
• I feel bad about Ban Ki-Moon using the Rohingya word at the ASEAN [Association of Southeast<br />
Asian Nations] Summit. As a representative of the UN, he should not add to the conflict by<br />
using this word. I worry because the Rohingya word never existed before. It’s not one of the<br />
135 ethnic groups so the government doesn’t accept it either. 88<br />
• <strong>IN</strong>GOs and UN are trying to give citizenship to illegal Bengali people, pressuring the government<br />
on this front. Because of these reasons, people have hostility to the UN and <strong>IN</strong>GOs… The<br />
OIC in other Muslim countries support the Rohingya through <strong>IN</strong>GOs. The Muslim communities<br />
who have lived in Rakhine State for centuries can apply for citizenship, they are currently<br />
trying to apply. The application depends on the 1982 law. The Rohingya are trying to ‘get<br />
around the law’ by creating this [Rohingya] identity. If the international community recognises<br />
the Rohingya as an indigenous people they won’t have to apply as per the 1982 law. 89<br />
• Rohingya is not just a word. Behind the word is the idea that they [Bengalis] are an ethnic<br />
group. The purpose of creating the word is to automatically gain citizenship of Myanmar without<br />
going via the 1982 application process. Even though they use the word Rohingya, those<br />
people have a very strong relationship with Bengalis - the language, religion and culture is<br />
similar to Bengali, they are just trying to create a new identity. 90<br />
86 Maung Maung Ohn’s appointment was announced on 26 June 2012: http://www.dvb.no/news/president-nominatesmilitary-man-as-arakan-chief-minister-burma-myanmar/41856.<br />
Accessed 13 October 2015.<br />
87 ISCI interview with leader of prominent Rakhine civil society organisation, 22 January 2015, Sittwe.<br />
88 Secretary of a Rakhine civil society organisation, interview conducted in Sittwe on 24 November 2014.<br />
89 ECC leader, elder Than Tun, interviewed in Sittwe on 22 November 2014.<br />
90 Ibid.<br />
39
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
In response to the international community’s alleged bias in reporting on the 2012 violence, the Arakan<br />
Human Rights and Development Organisation (AHRDO) published its own inflammatory and racist<br />
report (funded by the extremist anti-Muslim monk, Ashin Wirathu) which challenged both the legitimacy<br />
of the international community and demonised the Rohingya. A representative from AHRDO explained<br />
the motivation behind the report, the sense of injustice felt by the Rakhine community, and the way the<br />
government manipulated that anger:<br />
We did a lot of research during the conflict interviewed in different regions, different state<br />
townships and we published this report... it took more than a year. But it is a reaction to the<br />
international community, because at the time Al Jazeera and Human [Rights] Watch and many<br />
other <strong>IN</strong>GOs, they were all on the Bengali side and only one side is written. This report is the<br />
only report from our communities - the only report…<br />
What I want – we want – is both sides! A balance, you know… I'm a Buddhist, human rights<br />
activist. I love all people so that's why our mood is like human rights for all… [But the <strong>IN</strong>GOs]<br />
write only for the Rohingya people…<br />
<strong>IN</strong>GOs, you know in the past, they have bad history because they only give support to the<br />
Bengali Muslims…they only give support to the Bengali villages and they leave out Rakhine<br />
villages, that's why you know in the past- since the 1990s for more than 20 years, we feel ‘oh<br />
we are deflated and we are also poor!’ You know people in some areas are just hand to mouth,<br />
both Rakhine community and Bengali community. So why are we neglected?<br />
… The government is taking advantage you know. The Rakhine, they feel in the past neglected<br />
and discriminated against, and the government is taking advantage. 91<br />
The AHRDO office was allegedly attacked by nationalists in late 2014 for perceived political moderation.<br />
Two of its staff were apparently forced to take refuge for a period in Yangon. 92<br />
Rakhine nationalism<br />
The Arakan National Party has become one of the strongest ethnically-based political parties in the<br />
country. 93 In 2010 it won seven seats in the national government’s upper house and nine in the lower. 94<br />
Today, the party is an amalgamation of the Rakhine Nationalities Development Party (RNDP) and Arakan<br />
League for Democracy (ALD), which merged in January 2014. 95<br />
91 Senior Member of a Rakhine civil society organisation based in Sittwe, 12 November 2014, Sittwe.<br />
92 Interviews with Rakhine and <strong>IN</strong>GO sources, January – March 2015.<br />
93 Ye Mon, ‘SNLD to field 160 candidates’, Myanmar Times, 21 July 2015: http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/<br />
national-news/15587-snld-to-field-160-candidates.html. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
94 Moe Myint, ‘Arakan National Party Eyes 63 Seats in General Election’, The Irrawaddy, 14 July 2015:<br />
http://www.irrawaddy.org/burma/arakan-national-party-eyes-63-seats-in-general-election.html. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
95 Interview with ANP members at ANP office in Sittwe, 22November 2014. The Arakan League for Democracy (ALD) was set<br />
up in 1990 and won 11 of 26 seats in the 1990 election. The ALD boycotted the 1990 election, however, and those who did not<br />
agree with this decision split off from the ALD and formed the RNDP. The RNDP and ALD re-merged in January 2014 to form<br />
the ANP.<br />
40
2. BACKGROUND<br />
The Arakan National Party’s Headquarters, Sittwe<br />
In July 2015 the ANP indicated a scaling-up of its political ambitions when it announced plans to contest<br />
63 seats in the 8 November 2015 election – all 34 elected seats in Rakhine state’s regional parliament and<br />
29 seats in the national parliament (17 in the lower house and 12 in the upper house). 96<br />
The announcement included plans to contest four predominantly Rohingya constituencies in northern<br />
Rakhine state (in Maungdaw and Buthidaung townships). 97 Speculation also emerged that Dr Aye Maung,<br />
head of the ANP, has ambitions to become Rakhine state Chief Minister and that U Shwe Mann, the current<br />
Speaker in the national parliament and former chairman of the Union Solidarity and Development<br />
Party (USDP), had promised to help him achieve this. 98 It is worth noting that when Maung Maung Ohn<br />
was appointed as Rakhine state’s Chief Minister in 2014 he stated:<br />
There will be an ethnic Rakhine chief minister in Rakhine state when the new government takes<br />
over in 2015… I will hand over my position to the new ethnic Rakhine chief minister when the<br />
time comes. 99<br />
96 Moe Myint, ‘Arakan National Party Eyes 63 Seats’.<br />
97 Ibid.<br />
98 Mratt Kyaw Thu, ‘Rakhine Nationa Party in “chaos”’, Myanmar Times, 26 June 2015: http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/<br />
national-news/15221-rakhine-national-party-in-chaos.html. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
99 ‘New Chief Minister for Myanmar’s Rakhine State to Serve for Only a Year’, Radio Free Asia, 27 June 2014: http://www.rfa.<br />
org/english/news/myanmar/rakhine-06272014180702.html. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
41
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Since the 2012 violence, the perception that the opposition NLD is too weak on the ‘Bengali issue’ has<br />
grown, fuelled by nationalist and Buddhist propaganda. Despite Aung San Suu Kyi’s refusal to condemn<br />
the persecution of the Rohingya 100 the NLD has lost popularity in the region. An NLD member who<br />
participated in the ISCI research said:<br />
Before 2012 a lot of people supported the NLD. After the 2012 conflict, Aung San Suu Kyi<br />
said she was really concerned about what was happening in Rakhine state - that there was a<br />
minority clashing with a majority and that both sides should respect each other to get stability.<br />
That’s why Rakhine people are very angry with Aung San Suu Kyi. The nationalist party started<br />
spreading the rumour that the NLD grants more favours to Muslims. Also a nationalist group<br />
posted photoshopped images of Aung San Suu Kyi wearing Muslim dress on social media. 101<br />
According to NLD interviewees, since the 2012 violence Rakhine national groups have attacked<br />
the Sittwe NLD office three times, destroying the NLD billboard outside the office. As a result,<br />
the office has moved location three times. 102 Impunity for such intimidation persists. The NLD<br />
interviewees said they knew which groups were responsible for the vandalism, but were uncomfortable<br />
to mention the name publicly. They said they had lodged an official complaint – in writing and in person<br />
– with the police and township administration, but no action has been taken.<br />
NLD members also shed light on the rise of nationalism in Rakhine state and the danger for those who<br />
oppose this view and for moderates. One said:<br />
Democracy is not easy here. Only nationalism exists here. We are struggling for democracy<br />
for so many years. However, in Rakhine after 2012, it’s not like we can say anything about<br />
democracy. If people talk about nationalism, people like it. If we discuss, democracy and what is<br />
wrong and right, then the nationalist groups target us … There are also a lot of moderate people<br />
but they are scared of the nationalists … They’re scared of, like, bad people, we’re scared about<br />
national groups attacking our houses and assuming that we are traitors. We don’t want to enter<br />
conflict with them. 103<br />
On the issue of white card holders’ eligibility to vote, however, the Rakhine NLD branch and ANP are in<br />
agreement. The interviewee explained why the NLD does not want white card holders to vote:<br />
Because this is according to law, people holding the white card are not citizens yet. Only citizens<br />
should vote. That is according to law. The Rakhine party and NLD are in unity, that’s why we are<br />
standing together on the white card, because it’s based on citizenship. People who are citizens<br />
should vote in the referendum. People who are not citizens should not vote in the elections. 104<br />
100 Green, P, ‘Aung San Suu Kyi’s silence on the genocide of Rohingya Muslims is tantamount to complicity’, The Independent,<br />
20 May 2015: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/aung-san-suu-kyis-silence-on-the-genocide-of-rohingyamuslims-is-tantamount-to-complicity-10264497.html.<br />
Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
101 Interview with NLD members, Rakhine state, Sittwe, 17 February 2015.<br />
102 Ibid.<br />
103 Ibid.<br />
104 Ibid.<br />
42
2. BACKGROUND<br />
NLD members also confirmed that they joined protests held in Sittwe in February against parliament’s 2<br />
February 2015 decision to allow white card holders to vote. 105 The vote overwhelmingly passed, with 328<br />
votes in favour, 79 against and 19 absentee. 106 Just days later, however, on 11 February, President Thein<br />
Sein reversed parliament’s decision even though in December 2014 he had recommended to parliament<br />
that white card holders should be eligible to vote in a constitutional referendum scheduled for 2015. 107<br />
In August 2015 Myanmar’s Electoral Commission banned U Shwe Maung, an elected Rohingya lawmaker<br />
and USDP member (Rohingya MP for northern Rakhine state) from running for re-election. A fax from the<br />
Electoral Commission notified U Shwe Maung that he was ineligible on the basis that he is not a citizen,<br />
even though he had held office for the previous four years. 108<br />
In July 2015, a proposal to amend section 261 of the constitution, to enable state and divisional legislatures<br />
to elect their own chief ministers, failed to pass, having only achieved 66 per cent of favourable<br />
votes (75 per cent is required). 109 The amendment received overwhelming support from civilian MPs: it is<br />
assumed the military bloc (who are assigned 56 seats) voted against the proposal, which means that over<br />
90 per cent of elected representatives voted in favour. Schedule Five, enumerating regional governments’<br />
taxation powers, was extended to allow regional governments to bolster state and divisional funds via<br />
taxes on 20 new potential revenue streams (such as oil and gas), including levies on income, commerce<br />
and customs. Political commentator Yan Myo Thein commented on the vote:<br />
If regional and state parliaments cannot select their Chief Ministers, it’s impossible for states<br />
and regions to see their own government emerge in the post-2015 election [period]. In<br />
other words, there is no possibility for self-administration to emerge in ethnic regions. Without<br />
self-government and self-administration, the political path to a federal union is weakening. 110<br />
The failure of proposed constitutional changes to section 261 is likely related to the peace process that<br />
is addressing long-standing armed conflicts between the army and ethnic minority groups in various<br />
regions, in the sense that it allows the military to retain bargaining power. The rejection of section<br />
261 proposed amendments is detrimental for national political reconciliation, however, as a decision to<br />
decentralise power would have demonstrated that the military is genuine about reform and granting<br />
ethnic groups the political rights they have been demanding since Myanmar’s independence. This is a<br />
particularly important issue in a country where minority peoples comprise a third of the population. 111<br />
105 Kay Zue, ‘Rakhine Buddhists to protest against “white card” vote decision’, BurmaNet News, 6 February 2015:<br />
http://www.burmanet.org/news/2015/02/06/mizzima-news-rakhine-buddhists-to-protest-against-white-card-vote-decisionkay-zue/.<br />
Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
106 Lawi Weng, ‘”White Card” Holders Eligible to Vote on Constitutional Reform’, The Irrawaddy, 3 February 2015: http://www.<br />
irrawaddy.org/election/news/white-card-holders-eligible-to-vote-on-constitutional-reform. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
107 Nyein Nyein, ‘Thein Sein Pushes Referendum Suffrage for White Card Holders’, The Irrawaddy, 22 December 2014: http://www.<br />
irrawaddy.org/election/news/thein-sein-pushes-referendum-suffrage-for-white-card-holders. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
108 Fuller ,T, ‘Myanmar Striking Rohingya From Voter Rolls, Activists Say’, New York Times, 23 August 2015:<br />
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/24/world/asia/myanmar-lawmaker-u-shwe-maung-barred-from-re-election-oncitizenship-grounds.html?_r=0.<br />
Accessed 11 October 2015. See also: Ye Mon, ‘Muslims parties fear exclusion from election’,<br />
Myanmar Times, 27 August 2015: http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/16176-muslim-parties-fearexclusion-from-election.html.<br />
Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
109 Htoo Thant, Pyae Thet Phyo, and Lun Min Mang, ‘MPs vow to maintain push for chief minister selection change’,<br />
Myanmar Times, 13 July 2015: http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/15466-mps-vow-to-maintain-push-forchief-minister-selection-change.html.<br />
Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
110 Yen Snaing, ‘Charter Push for Decentralization, Stronger Parliament Falters’, The Irrawaddy, 9 July 2015: http://www.<br />
irrawaddy.org/burma/charter-push-for-decentralization-stronger-parliament-falters.html. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
111 Transnational Institute, ‘Burma’s Ethnic Challenge: From Aspirations to Solutions’, Burma Policy Briefing, October 2013,<br />
No.12, pp. 1-20. p. 3: https://www.tni.org/files/download/bpb_12_def.pdf. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
43
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
However, the possibility of granting regional governments more power poses serious challenges in<br />
Rakhine state, where local politicians express, unchecked, a vicious form of nationalism and religious<br />
hatred. The history of recent leadership in Rakhine state should not engender a sense of complacency.<br />
The current, and temporary, Chief Minister Mya Aung is a low ranking Rakhine who in his own words<br />
is ‘too low in rank to receive direct instruction from the president by phone.’ 112 He was appointed to<br />
replace former army major and deputy Minister for Border Affairs, Maung Maung Ohn who resigned in<br />
August 2015 to contest the November 2015 elections. Many international organisations regarded Maung<br />
Maung Ohn as genuine in his attempts to facilitate their work in the region and to cooperate with them.<br />
Other analysts said he was appointed to calm tensions, to ‘keep Sittwe out of flames’. However, ISCI’s<br />
research points to a more cynical conclusion. Maung Maung Ohn was apparently drafted in by the national<br />
government to quell the violence. His solution was to encourage Rakhine nationalist mobilisation, the<br />
spread of racist propaganda and to afford impunity to those responsible for violence against the Rohingya.<br />
The logical consequence has been that segregation has become the solution.<br />
In June 2015, following the boat crisis, Maung Maung Ohn had announced:<br />
If you want to know whether or not what they [the international community] say is true, come<br />
and have a look at Arakan State. We are open to any investigation… Don’t say anything based<br />
on hearsay. 113<br />
However, just days earlier, Myanmar naval authorities turned away foreign media as they attempted to<br />
access a fishing boat carrying 727 refugees. Reuters reported that journalists were briefly detained,<br />
questioned, made to delete photos and videos, and then ordered to leave the area. 114<br />
Indeed, the majority of researchers and journalists are denied access to northern Rakhine state and IDP<br />
camps outside of Sittwe. In August 2015 Yanghee Lee was denied access to Rakhine state in her capacity<br />
as Special Rapporteur on Myanmar. Rakhine state officials stated that she was not able to visit the region<br />
due to extreme weather conditions, however, she reported that her request for a stopover was denied<br />
well before her visit had begun. 115<br />
New Chief Minister Mya Aung has reported that he will continue the work of Maung Maung Ohn: ‘Arakan<br />
State has become stable now and we’ll introduce measures to make it more stable. There are no more<br />
problems with the Bengalis.’ 116<br />
Islamophobia fuels perceptions that Rakhine culture, already endangered as a result of decades of Bamarled<br />
oppression, is similarly threatened by perceived Muslim expansion. Rakhine unity has strengthened in<br />
the face of dual enemies: the Bamar and the Rohingya.<br />
112 Ming Aung Khaing, ‘New Arakan Chief Minister Mya Aung: “The President Trusts Me”’, The Irrawaddy, 9 September 2015:<br />
http://www.irrawaddy.org/election/interview/new-arakan-chief-minister-mya-aung-the-president-trusts-me. Accessed<br />
10 0ctober 2015.<br />
113 Kyaw Phyo Tha, ‘Arakan Officials Face Off with Muslims Leaders over Boat People Crisis’, The Irrawaddy, 1 June 2015:<br />
http://www.irrawaddy.org/burma/arakan-officials-face-off-with-muslim-leaders-over-boat-people-crisis.html. Accessed 10<br />
October 2015.<br />
114 McLaughlin, T and Soe Zeya Tun, ‘Myanmar Navy Blocks Journalists as Migrant Boat Held in Limbo’, Reuters, 31 May 2015:<br />
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/31/uk-asia-migrants-boat-idUKKBN0OG0CP20150531. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
115 Solomon, F, ‘Burma Govt “Hampers” Mandate of UN Rights Envoy’, The Irrawaddy, 7 August 2015: http://www.irrawaddy.org/<br />
burma/govt-hampers-mandate-of-yanghee-lee.html. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
116 Ibid.<br />
44
2. BACKGROUND<br />
Mein Kampf on sale in Sittwe’s main street<br />
ISCI found evidence of Nazi ideology in official ANP documents. In Rakhine state, as in other areas<br />
of Myanmar, it is not uncommon to see Nazi and SS paraphernalia (t-shirts, helmets etc.) as well as<br />
copies of Mein Kampf being sold on the street. Against this background and standing in front of an Arakan<br />
Army calendar entitled ‘Defenders of Our Fatherland’, Sittwe’s ANP spokesperson told ISCI that Rohingya<br />
should be moved to ‘concentration camps’ in central Myanmar before asking, with a smile on his face, to<br />
change that to ‘refugee camps’, obviously conscious of the connotations. 117 The forerunner of the ANP, the<br />
RNDP published an editorial in its November 2012 magazine, The Progress, declaring:<br />
Hitler and Eichmann were the enemy of the Jews, but they were probably heroes to the<br />
Germans [...] In order for a country’s survival, the survival of a race, or in defense of national<br />
sovereignty, crimes against humanity or in-human acts may justifiably be committed [...] So, if<br />
that survival principle or justification is applied or permitted equally (in our Myanmar case) our<br />
endeavours to protect our Rakhine race and defend the sovereignty and longevity of the Union of<br />
Myanmar cannot be labelled as “crimes against humanity,” or “inhuman” or “in-humane” [sic]<br />
[...] We will go down in history as cowards if we pass on these [Rohingya] issues to the next<br />
generation without getting it over and done with. 118<br />
117 Interview with ANP spokesperson, ANP office, Sittwe, 21 January 2015.<br />
118 Original PDF of The Progress editorial supplied by journalist Francis Wade; see also Hudson-Rodd, N, ‘Silence as Myanmar<br />
“genocide” unfolds’, Asia Times, 18 February 2014: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/SEA-01-180214.html.<br />
Accessed 8 October 2015.<br />
45
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Arakan Army Calendar 2015, ANP office, SIttwe<br />
The presence of a significant Muslim population in Rakhine state contributes to a siege-like mentality<br />
on the part of Rakhine leaders, who frequently refer to themselves as ‘the protectors of<br />
Myanmar’ and guardians of the ‘western gate’ against a perceived Islamic threat. Nyo Aye, the<br />
Rakhine Women’s Network Chair in Sittwe, claimed in 2014: ‘We are worried that this country will<br />
not remain Buddhist …We Rakhines are strongly guarding Myanmar's western door.’ 119 In 2013 U<br />
Shwe Mann, former chairman of the USDP and parliamentary Speaker, offered official support<br />
for this view when he said: ‘I appreciate the attempts of the Rakhine people to protect Myanmar.’ 120<br />
The Arakan region has long been a frontier between Muslim and Buddhist Asia 121 and home to successive<br />
independent Arakan kingdoms. 122 History surrounding the once mighty Mrauk U Arakanese Kingdom<br />
(1430-1785) which was invaded by the Burmese in 1785, also provides much of the basis for Rakhine<br />
nationalism today. Mrauk U, founded by King Narameikhla, was the capital of Arakan state. The King’s<br />
Muslim soldiers, who came with him from Bengal, settled in a village near Mrauk U and built the Sandi<br />
Khan Mosque. Muslim influence in Arakan may therefore be said to date from 1430. 123<br />
In an attempt to deny this Muslim influence, the tatmadaw destroyed ancient mosques throughout the<br />
region during the 1990s. A further 33 mosques in Sittwe alone were destroyed during the 2012 violence. 124<br />
119 Belford, A, ‘As Myanmar’s Rakhine Buddists gain strength, so does anti-Muslim apartheid’, Reuters, 18 June 2014:<br />
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/06/18/us-myanmar-rohingya-idUSKBN0ET2UR20140618. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
120 Ei Ei Toe Lwin,, ‘Speaker pledges “support” for Rakhine people’, Myanmar Times, 4 October 2013: http://www.mmtimes.com/<br />
index.php/national-news/8350-speaker-pledges-support-for-rakhine-people.html. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
121 International Crisis Group, Myanmar: The Politics of Rakhine State, Asia Report No. 261, 22 October 2014, p. 2:<br />
http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/south-east-asia/burma-myanmar/261-myanmar-the-politics-of-rakhine-state.<br />
pdf. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
122 Da Nyaddy (580BC-327), Versali (327BC-580AD) Laya Mro, and Mrauk U (1430-1785), ANP, 26 Jan Mrauk U.<br />
123 Yegar, M, The Crescent in Arakan’, (orginal date unknown), Kaladan Press Network, 22 October 2006: http://www.kaladanpress.org/index.php/scholar-column-mainmenu-36/36-rohingya/216-the-crescent-in-arakan.html.<br />
Accessed 10 October<br />
2015.<br />
124 Interview with prominent Rohingya leader, Sittwe, 29 January 2015.<br />
46
2. BACKGROUND<br />
Ruins of destroyed and abandoned mosque, downtown Sittwe, February 2015<br />
In the years following independence from the British in 1948, armed revolts were staged by national<br />
minorities and communists. One involved a Muslim group known as the Majahids, and affected the<br />
northern Rakhine state districts of Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung (formerly known as Mayu<br />
district) that lie on the Bangladesh frontier and are populated mainly by Rohingya. These events led to<br />
an informal division of the state into a predominantly Muslim (including Rohingya) north and Rakhine<br />
(Buddhist) south, with Maungdaw and Buthidaung becoming Muslim strongholds.<br />
Tensions under British rule between Buddhists and Muslims had peaked in 1945. As a reward for the<br />
Muslim population’s pro-British stance during the Japanese occupation of Rakhine state (1942 until early<br />
1945), the British promised them an autonomous area in northern Rakhine and encouraged Muslims to<br />
take up administrative posts and engage in infrastructure projects. The Muslim population of northern<br />
Arakan grew considerably during and after World War Two as a result of immigration from Chittagong.<br />
Thousands of refugees from south Arakan who had crossed into India in 1942 now returned to north<br />
Arakan. 125 Buddhists there saw these Muslims as migrants and imperialist invaders, responsible for<br />
stealing local employment opportunities and cultivating fertile soils for the benefit of the British enemy.<br />
These factors, including the fresh memory of the war-time massacres, meant that Muslims became the<br />
subject of popular national resentment.<br />
125 Yegar, M, ‘The Crescent in Arakan’.<br />
47
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
These and other historical events have been resurrected and manipulated by the Myanmar government to<br />
fuel the current Rakhine sense of injustice and insecurity. A Rakhine politician explained how this feeds<br />
directly into the current climate of distrust between communities:<br />
There is fear between Rakhine Buddhists and Muslims … the Rakhine dare not go to Bengali<br />
areas ... Before the separation of the two communities, I dare not go into Muslim communities<br />
just outside town. I never go there, I didn’t go there at any time, at night, but any Muslim can<br />
come here … It’s a long story, in 1942, 200 Rakhine villages disappeared, killed by Muslims …<br />
Probably if I go there I will disappear. 126<br />
Impact of the 2012 conflict<br />
Prior to the massacres of 2012, Sittwe appears to have been a thriving, multicultural town where<br />
Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim religions, and Rakhine, Rohingya, Kaman and Maramagyi ethnic communities<br />
coexisted in relative harmony. There were over 140 Muslim businesses in downtown Sittwe; 38 mosques;<br />
schools were mixed and the different communities traded with each other, conducted routine business<br />
transactions and engaged socially. 127 Intermarriage and the sharing of cultural traditions and festivals<br />
were not uncommon.<br />
The following extracts from interviews with various Rakhine Buddhists reflect how the 2012 violence<br />
shattered the friendships and cooperation that had existed between Buddhists and Muslims:<br />
• I was surprised by the conflict… Before, I lived with the Muslims in a brotherly way. I had a<br />
friend and we were together. I haven’t seen my friend since the conflict. I haven’t seen any<br />
Muslims since the conflict. The government separated us. And I don’t want to see them. They<br />
are bad and they kill Rakhine. 128<br />
• I was working in Buthidaung… The school was in a Rakhine village but the students were<br />
mixed. There was only one other teacher who was also Rakhine. There were no problems<br />
between Rakhine and Muslim students, no discrimination. The kids played and worked together.<br />
The village was also all integrated. Villagers were integrated... Most of the students were<br />
Muslims so I have a strong feeling regarding Muslims. I have very close Muslim friends... I felt<br />
sad when I heard Muslim students killed a Rakhine headmaster. I felt sad to hear this. I also<br />
felt sad about violence against Muslim friends… 129<br />
Following the 2012 conflict, relations between the communities in Sittwe and Mrauk U were effectively<br />
severed. Given the level of apartheid segregation now dividing the two communities it is hard to see how<br />
former relations will be restored.<br />
126 ANP spokesperson, 21 January 2015, Sittwe.<br />
127 Interview with elder, Aung Mingalar Rohingya ghetto, Sittwe, 24 January 2015.<br />
128 Interview with a 55-year-old Rakhine man, Sittwe, 5 December 2014.<br />
129 Interview with 44-year-old Rakhine woman who was born in Maungdaw in 1970, grew up in Sittwe, and worked as a teacher<br />
in Buthidaung between 1994 and 1998, interviewed in Sittwe, 24 November 2014.<br />
48
2. BACKGROUND<br />
During the conflict, Muslims simply disappeared from the lives of their Rakhine friends. Muslims were<br />
segregated in the detention camp complex and the Aung Mingalar ghetto. Muslim students were no longer<br />
permitted to attend Sittwe schools or university. Merchants and traders were effectively prohibited from<br />
entering downtown Sittwe. The two communities were now physically and ideologically an ocean apart.<br />
Downtown Sittwe, cleansed of all Muslim influence since 2012 violence<br />
In Northern Rakhine State the situation is reportedly rather different. Communities are still to some extent<br />
integrated. In the market places Rakhine stalls stand beside Rohingya stalls and Rohingya trishaw drivers<br />
carry Rakhine passengers. Children attend the same schools until the age of 16 but the Rohingya can no<br />
longer attend Sittwe university given the prohibitions on Muslim travel and the threat of violence from<br />
both security forces and Rakhine nationalists should they be seen. 130<br />
In Sittwe and Mrauk U the lack of daily contact, combined with the racist fears promulgated within the<br />
Rakhine community, have resulted in a rapid growth of hostility. This was reflected by interviewees:<br />
130 Francis Wade, unpublished field observations, October 2015. Reproduced with permission of the author.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
• I managed 200 people [before the conflict], Muslims and Rakhine, 80 Muslims. They used to<br />
work together eagerly… I still communicate a little with people from Thandoli village [Muslim]<br />
but I can’t bring them here because other people might make problems for me. The Rakhine<br />
have hate. And the headmaster was killed in Maung Daw… I hired Muslims to carry rice from<br />
paddy fields to my house. When we had festivals, we invited them. When they had Eid, we<br />
would go. And also, Novus ceremony, we would sit together, drink alcohol, no problem, always<br />
people keep in touch. Now I’m scared to see them in person. 131<br />
• No one will buy from Muslim people because they are afraid of being killed and they think food<br />
might be poisoned. I think Muslim intentions are not good. I don’t want to communicate with<br />
Muslim people anymore. 132<br />
• I used to work with ‘kalar’. I would buy from ‘kalar’ shops, but I didn’t have any ‘kalar’ friends…<br />
Before the conflict I didn’t think ‘kalar’ were bad, but I think that their behaviour recently is<br />
very bad… I don’t want to live near them anymore, especially after the conflict I feel this way. 133<br />
• Rakhine are the native people, Muslims should have a sense of respect towards them. I used<br />
to stay at a Muslim friend’s house in Maungdaw, but I don’t go anymore because I’m afraid.<br />
The Muslim friends I used to have, they were close to Rakhine people and they understand<br />
them. But there are extreme people and those are the problem. I would like to meet my Muslim<br />
friends again, but I’m too afraid to go to Maungdaw... We have no contact with Muslim people<br />
since the conflict. I’m willing to work with them but it depends how the Muslims react to us…<br />
We need Muslim leaders who are trusted and vice versa. Rakhine trusted leaders and then,<br />
they can liaise with each other towards coming to a solution with the government’s help…<br />
I need permission from the government but if I do this [engage in interfaith activities], I think<br />
people might think I’m working too closely with the government, which isn’t good. 134<br />
• Today, both sides are scared of each other. We visited Muslim villages during the day but not<br />
at night. Even the police say not to visit at night… Before the conflict, we would sleep and eat<br />
at each other’s villages. The Muslims can speak Muslim and Rakhine. And a few Rakhine can<br />
speak Muslim that is Bengali. We were eating and sleeping together before. Cooking, eating,<br />
doing business, enjoying each other’s culture. In Maungdaw and Kyauk Phyu, many houses<br />
were burned down. There were so many reasons that started the conflict. That’s why we’ve<br />
lost trust. 135<br />
Against this background, the road to genocide was well under way.<br />
131 Rakhine man, aged 45, informal village administrator, interviewed in village on outskirts of Sittwe, 6 December 2014.<br />
132 Rakhine woman, aged 40, interviewed in Sittwe on 4 December 2015.<br />
133 Rakhine woman, aged 43, interviewed in Sittwe on 28 November 2014.<br />
134 Rakhine civil society activist, interview conducted in Sittwe on 24 November 2014.<br />
135 Ye Seni Pyen Village Group, 28 November 2014.<br />
50
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
PART II: ROAD TO <strong>GENOCIDE</strong><br />
Child’s toy, Rohingya IDP camp, Sittwe<br />
…the effects of genocide do not end but only begin with the deaths of the victims. In short the main objective<br />
of genocidal destruction is the transformation of the victims into ‘nothing’ and the survivors into ‘nobodies.’<br />
(Feierstein) 136<br />
This section provides evidence for the first four stages of genocide: systematic, institutionalised stigmatization<br />
and dehumanisation; subjection to harassment, violence and terror; the organised isolation and<br />
segregation of the Rohingya into detention camps, prison villages and a ghetto; and finally the systematic<br />
weakening of the Rohingya community. Taken together these overlapping stages provide compelling evidence<br />
of genocidal persecution against the Rohingya.<br />
136 Feierstein, D, Genocide as Social Practice.<br />
52
3. STIGMATISATION AND DEHUMANISATION<br />
The first step in destroying previously cooperative relations within or between social groups is stigmatisation.<br />
(Feierstein) 137<br />
The stigmatisation and dehumanisation of the Rohingya operates from the highest levels of government<br />
to local Rakhine civil society. In 2015 the Head of the Myanmar Human Rights Commission, Win Mra, an<br />
ethnic Rakhine who refers to the Rohingya who mainly live in Rakhine state as ‘strangers’, said:<br />
As human beings… we have the right to food, health and other human rights, but when you<br />
claim yourself as a Rohingya, that's a different issue. 138<br />
A leading Rakhine human rights organisation, said:<br />
But these Bengalis are not like humans - they are intolerant demons which spill blood and inflict<br />
pain and suffering on others. Thus we must resist them. 139<br />
The process of stigmatisation and dehumanisation has been in play for over three decades. A key moment<br />
in re-positioning the Rohingya outside the state’s sphere of responsibility was in 1982, when General Ne<br />
Win removed the Rohingya from the list of officially recognised ethnic minorities. Central to this ongoing<br />
re-positioning is the government’s explicit refusal to recognise or use the term ‘Rohingya’.<br />
Demonisation on the basis of skin colour, other physical characteristics or alleged behaviour patterns –<br />
a feature of genocides elsewhere in the world – is widespread in Myanmar. In 2009, for instance,<br />
Myanmar’s senior official in Hong Kong, Ye Myint Aung, compared the ‘fair and soft skin’ of Myanmar<br />
people with the ‘dark brown’ complexion of the Rohingya who he described as ‘ugly as ogres’. 140<br />
137 Ibid.<br />
138 Paluch, G, ‘As Myanmar rights official, an Elvis impersonator sings different tune’, LA Times, 1 July 2015: http://www.latimes.<br />
com/world/asia/la-fg-ff-myanmar-elvis-20150701-story.html#page=1. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
139 Arakan Human Rights and Development Organisation (AHRDO), ‘Conflict and Violence in Arakan (Rakhine) State, Myanmar<br />
(Burma): What is Happening, Why and What To Do’, July 2013 p.21: http://www.burmalink.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/<br />
AHRDO.Arakan-Violence-Report-for-reading-Online.pdf. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
140 ‘Myanmar envoy terms Rohingyas “ugly as ogres”’, The Dawn, 12 February 2009: http://www.dawn.com/news/342940/<br />
myanmar-envoy-terms-rohingyas-ugly-as-ogres. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
53
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
The most prominent Buddhist voice of ethno-religious hatred, Ashin Wirathu, has likened Muslims to<br />
African carp in his racist and often bizarre sermons: ‘They breed quickly and they are very violent and<br />
they eat their own.’ He has also equated Islamic halal practices with a ‘familiarity with blood’ which could<br />
threaten world peace, redolent of the Nazi prohibition on the kosher slaughtering of animals. 141<br />
Government officials have staged a determined campaign to dehumanise Rohingya by banning even the<br />
mention of their name. For example, the Myanmar government’s Commission of Inquiry into the 2012<br />
violence reported:<br />
The Government of the Union of Myanmar does not recognize the name Rohingya… Bengalis<br />
now pushing to use the term Rohingya are surely fanning the flames of sectarian violence…<br />
Bengali demands to be recognized as Rohingya will only be divisive, leading to more conflict,<br />
possibly with greater losses than before. 142<br />
In June 2014, following the presentation of UNICEF’s development plans for Rakhine state to local partners,<br />
the Minister of Local Security asked the UN children’s fund to apologize for using the word ‘Rohingya’. 143<br />
In May 2015, Myanmar’s leaders announced they would not attend a regional meeting in Thailand in<br />
response to the boat crisis on the Andaman Sea if the word ‘Rohingya’ was used in the invitation.<br />
Myanmar’s deputy foreign minister, Thant Kyaw, said:<br />
If they are using the word Rohingya in the official title of the meeting, we cannot join… If we<br />
joined, it would seem like we accept the term Rohingya. 144<br />
The same month at the Special Meeting on Irregular Migration in the Indian Ocean, held in Thailand, Htin<br />
Lin, Myanmar’s representative, told media:<br />
We are totally against the use of the nomenclature Rohingya, which never [existed] as a race in<br />
[this] country. 145<br />
This policy of identity denial operates from the very highest echelons of government witnessed at a meeting<br />
in London, in July 2015, when President Thein Sein declared that ‘We do not have the term Rohingya’ 146 .<br />
Of particular significance, State officials prohibited Rakhine’s Muslims from identifying as Rohingya in<br />
the 2014 census, announcing on the eve of the event that anyone who attempted to do so would be<br />
141 Kyaw, N. N., ‘Islamophobia in Buddhist Myanmar: The 969 Movement & Anti-Muslim Violence’, in Crouch, M (ed), Islam and<br />
the State in Myanmar: Muslim-Buddhist Relations and the Politics of Belonging, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Forthcoming<br />
2016), p. 15.<br />
142 Republic of the Union of Myanmar, ‘Final Report of Inquiry Commission on Sectarian Violence in Rakhine State’, 10 September<br />
2013, p. 56: http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs15/Rakhine_Commission_Report-en-red.pdf. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
143 UNICEF, ‘New plan to address significant needs of children in Rakhine State’, 10 June 2014: http://www.unicef.org/eapro/<br />
media_22654.html; and, Kean T, ‘UNICEF rejects apology reports’, Myanmar Times, 13 June 2014: http://www.mmtimes.com/<br />
index.php/national-news/10654-unicef-rejects-reports-of-apology-over-rohingya-use.html. Both accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
144 Lawi Weng, ‘Burma May Boycott Trafficking Summit over Use of Name “Rohingya”’, The Irrawaddy, 20 May 2015:<br />
http://www.irrawaddy.org/burma/burma-may-boycott-trafficking-summit-over-use-of-name-rohingya.html. Accessed<br />
10 October 2015.<br />
145 Roughneen, S, ‘”Rohingya” taboo at 17-nation meeting’ Nikkei Asian Review, 29 May 2015: http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-<br />
Economy/International-Relations/Rohingya-taboo-at-17-nation-meeting. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
146 Inkey, M, ‘Thein Sein talks at Chatham House’, AsiaPacific, New Mandala, 17 July 2013: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/<br />
newmandala/2013/07/17/thein-sein-talks-at-chatham-house/. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
54
3. STIGMATISATION AND DEHUMANISATION<br />
registered as ‘Bengali’, the derogatory term used by authorities who consider the Rohingya to be illegal<br />
immigrants from Bangladesh. 147 Government spokesperson Ye Htut announced on 30 March: ‘If a household<br />
wants to identify themselves as “Rohingya”, we will not register it. 148 He also said: ‘It will be acceptable<br />
if they write “Bengali”… We won’t accept them as “Rohingya”’. 149<br />
In Myanmar the militarised state has been particularly effective in securing the commitment of its citizens<br />
to an anti-Islamic narrative that conceptualises and stigmatises the Rohingya as illegal Bengali immigrants.<br />
A leaked military presentation for use in training cadets about Muslims is revealing. 150 Under the<br />
heading ‘Bengali Muslims’ it claims the following:<br />
• They infiltrate the people to propagate their religion.<br />
• Their population increases by way of mass illegal immigration.<br />
• They take advantage of Myanmar people whenever there is an opportunity.<br />
This narrative is widely endorsed by both the country’s political opposition (especially the NLD and Aung<br />
San Suu Kyi) and its human rights advocates. There is, as a result, no effective counter-narrative within<br />
Myanmar that challenges government propaganda and defends and asserts the existence of the Rohingya.<br />
Rohingya candidates, for example, have now been prohibited from standing in the 2015 elections.<br />
Dehumanisation techniques are reinforced through exclusion and systematic isolation. 151 This includes,<br />
for example, restricting the Rohingya to secure zones, detention camps, ghettos and prison villages,<br />
excluding them from higher education, the professions, the military and from working in the public<br />
service.<br />
A confidential telegram released by Wikileaks captures the situation of the Rohingya in 2006:<br />
Non-Buddhist ethnic minorities in Burma’s Rakhine State face the worst of times, with a flat<br />
economy, no citizenship rights, and no freedom to seek better opportunities elsewhere. […] The<br />
Imam of the oldest mosque in Sittwe told us that no Muslim resident of the city is permitted on<br />
the streets after 8 pm, and confirmed that he and most of the Muslims in his local community<br />
are not permitted to leave the city limits at all. The Imam said there were about 100 mosques<br />
in Sittwe District, but the authorities only permitted a few to remain open, and none could be<br />
repaired without permission. […] The Embassy will continue to pursue every opportunity to visit<br />
Rakhine State. Unfortunately, the regime tightly restricts access to the region, perhaps realizing<br />
how truly dreadful the situation there has become. 152<br />
147 ‘”Rohingya” term banned from Myanmar census’, Banglanews24, 29 March 2014.: http://en.banglanews24.com/fullnews/<br />
bn/88641.html. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
148 ‘Burma census bans people registering as Rohingya’, BBC, 30 March 2014: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worldasia-26807239.<br />
Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
149 ‘UNFPA under fire over census role’, BurmaNet News, 9 April 2014: http://www.burmanet.org/news/2014/04/09/<br />
mizzima-news-unfpa-under-fire-over-census-role/. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
150 Leaked document 3: Nyi Pyi Taw Divisional Military Headquarters, No (13) Combatants Organizing School, ‘Fear of Extinction<br />
of Race’, Lecture by Bo Toe Naing, Gazette No- Army 62505, Ka Tha No. 32, 26 October 2012. Acquired from Al Jazeera.<br />
151 Lecomte, J M, Teaching about the Holocaust in the 21st Century, (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, 2001), p. 49.<br />
152 A tale of two Sittwes: Burma’s ethnic tensions telegram from US embassy Yangon 27 November 2006, https://wikileaks.org/<br />
plusd/cables/06RANGOON1722_a.html. Accessed 20 October 2015.<br />
55
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Citizenship and white cards<br />
Rakhine-led campaign to remove white card holders’ right to vote, March 2015, Sittwe<br />
Central to the government’s dehumanisation campaign has been to deny Rohingya citizenship, making<br />
them a ‘non-people’.<br />
Myanmar’s 1982 Citizenship Law left the Rohingya without nationality, a move reinforced by publication<br />
in 1983 of the results of a census in which Rohingya were not counted. 153<br />
In 1989, the government instituted a citizen verification programme. Individuals were issued colour-coded<br />
citizenship scrutiny cards, which categorised citizenship by card colour. Full citizens held pink cards,<br />
‘associate citizens’ blue, and naturalized citizens green. 154 At this time, some Muslims held national registration<br />
cards, others held temporary registration certificates, and many had no identification at all. 155<br />
When Ne Win removed the Rohingya from the list of ‘national races’ he also introduced a series of<br />
arduous requirements that the Rohingya were required to satisfy in order to claim eligibility for any level<br />
of citizenship under Burmese Law.<br />
153 Human Rights Watch, ‘“All You Can Do is Pray”: Crimes Against Humanity and Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya Muslims<br />
in Burma’s Arakan State’, April 2013, Annex I, p. 139: https://www.hrw.org/report/2013/04/22/all-you-can-do-pray/<br />
crimes-against-humanity-and-ethnic-cleansing-rohingya-muslims. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
154 Amnesty International, Myanmar: The Rohingya Minority: Fundamental Rights Denied, AI Index: ASA 16/005/2004, (London:<br />
Amnesty International, 2004), p. 11: https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/ASA16/005/2004/en/. Accessed 10 October<br />
2015.<br />
155 The International Crisis Group, Myanmar: The Politics of Rakhine State, Asia Report No. 261, 22 October 2014, p. 11.<br />
56
3. STIGMATISATION AND DEHUMANISATION<br />
During the citizen verification process, government authorities collected the identification documents of<br />
Muslims in Rakhine state but never replaced them. This left most Rohingya and other Muslims in Rakhine<br />
state without any form of identification. 156<br />
We met Rohingya in Mrauk U who had ID cards of parents and grandparents recognising their involvement<br />
with Aung San’s independence movement. Rohingya in villages on the outskirts of Sittwe produced ID<br />
cards and family lists with the word ‘Rohingya’, some of which had been crossed out and replaced with<br />
the word ‘Bengali’. Interviewees claimed this to have been done by authorities in the 1990s. 157<br />
In the early 1990s Rohingya who were repatriated from Bangladesh, with the assistance of the UNHCR, were<br />
granted yellow ‘returnee identity cards’ which established nothing except the holder was a ‘returnee’. 158<br />
In 1995, the authorities granted many Muslims white ‘temporary registration cards’ that expressly do not<br />
grant citizenship, regardless of whether or not the card-holder previously held citizenship documents. 159<br />
The white card however, entitled the holder to vote in both the 2010 general election and 2012 by-elections.<br />
On 31 March 2015 white cards were revoked following a Rakhine-led campaign against them. As one<br />
person told ISCI, ‘the RNDP don’t want a million new voters who will vote against them’. 160 Myanmar has<br />
797,504 white card holders in total, the vast majority (666,381) held by Muslims in Rakhine state. 161<br />
Immigration officials reported that nearly 400,000 white cards had been returned by the end of May<br />
2015. U Tin Aye, chair of the Election Commission, claims that the government is still scrutinising white<br />
card holders, that the commission cannot allow white card holders to vote, and that no law yet exists to<br />
allow green card holders to vote. The Minister for Immigration, U Khin Yi, announced in June that the<br />
government would issue new green coloured cards to those who handed in white cards. He went on to<br />
say: ‘If necessary, we will ask parliament whether we should allow those holders to vote or not. We will<br />
follow the law. If parliament decides green card holders are granted citizenship or will be recognised as<br />
naturalised citizens in the future, I must allow [them to vote].’ 162<br />
The most recent form of citizenship verification process was piloted in 2014 in Rakhine state’s Myebon<br />
township, where around 200 Muslims, many of them Kaman, were granted citizenship on the basis that<br />
they registered as ‘Bengali’. The project was officially suspended following widespread resistance from<br />
local Buddhist Rakhine. 163<br />
Many of the Rohingya interviewed in camps, villages and Aung Mingalar saw citizenship as the key to<br />
lifting their oppression. In Rakhine province, Rohingya eagerly showed ISCI the treasured official ID cards<br />
of their parents, grandparents and sometimes their own if they were old enough to have been issued one.<br />
There was a desperate belief that if only they could convince the authorities of the legitimacy of their<br />
claims, they would be afforded their rightful entitlement to citizenship.<br />
156 The International Crisis Group, Myanmar: The Politics of Rakhine State, p. 11.<br />
157 Interviews with Rohingya in both villages and IDP camps in and around Sittwe.<br />
158 Amnesty International, The Rohingya Minority: Fundamental Rights Denied, p. 12.<br />
159 Ibid. See also, The International Crisis Group, Myanmar: The Politics of Rakhine State, p. 11.<br />
160 Senior UN staff member, Yangon, 30 October 2014.<br />
161 ‘NLD denies news report saying it demands to give citizenship to Bengalis’, Eleven: http://elevenmyanmar.com/politics/<br />
nld-denies-news-report-saying-it-demands-give-citizenship-bengalis. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
162 Myanmar Times (2015) ‘If you Want Clean Water, Don’t Stir up the Dirt’, 15 June, http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/<br />
national-news/15032-if-you-want-clean-water-don-t-stir-up-the-dirt.html?start=1. Accessed 20 October 2015.<br />
163 Senior UN staff member, 30 October 2014.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
ISCI’s findings suggest, however, that citizenship would be no protection against the State’s goal<br />
of eliminating the Rohingya. ISCI came across many Kaman Muslims with citizenship who faced<br />
relentless discrimination. They were trapped in their villages, hemmed in and oppressed by a very real<br />
threat of violence, cut off from their traditional livelihoods, and denied freedom of movement, education<br />
and healthcare (see below).<br />
A Kaman administrator of a mixed (Rohingya, Rakhine and Kaman) village tract 164 in the area of the camp<br />
complex expressed the uncertainty of the Kaman situation:<br />
The government doesn’t have policies on the Kaman because we are citizens. The Rohingya<br />
villagers have more difficulty than we have I think. They aren’t like us – they can’t go to the<br />
city, to the hospital and they can’t set up businesses. The Kaman can’t leave the village tract [a<br />
collection of several villages with one administration] either... We can’t go to the city or the<br />
hospital. 165<br />
164 Local villages in the greater Sittwe district are organised administratively into ‘village tracts’ which usually consist of four to<br />
seven villages. Tract administrators are sometimes paid by the government and are normally Rakhine. Tracts can be a mix of<br />
ethnic villages and each village has an unpaid, informal administrator who reports to the official administrator. Village tracts<br />
visited by ISCI included Rohingya, Kaman and Rakhine villages.<br />
165 Interviewed in the village tract, 25 January 2015.<br />
58
3. STIGMATISATION AND DEHUMANISATION<br />
Genocidal role of monks<br />
Several thousand people from the Rakhine Buddhist community participate in an anti-Rohingya demonstration in Sittwe in<br />
November 2014. The demonstrators reject the existence of the Rohingya in Myanmar and protest against UN Secretary General<br />
Ban Ki-moon's use of the word 'Rohingya' in a recent speech. (c) Greg Constantine<br />
Myanmar’s monks, (referred to collectively as the Sangha) have been central to the stigmatisation and<br />
violent harassment stages of the genocide, not least because they hold an especially revered position in<br />
Myanmar society. Respected and admired for their teachings, humility and acts of humanity, they hold the<br />
highest moral authority and their sermons are effectively ‘blueprints for proper moral conduct’. 166 They<br />
are also acutely aware of their power in society. In an unpublished interview, monk, Ven Pannasiha said:<br />
There are over 500,000 monks in Burma. There are only 450,000 soldiers… religious leaders<br />
have the power to grab people and attract them. And so, if the monks are united, the military<br />
cannot withstand it. Monks know that. 167<br />
The Sangha campaigns for race and religious purity are underpinned by the virulent stigmatisation of<br />
Muslim communities and are lent added potency because of the moral authority monks command at all<br />
levels of society. The infamous Buddhist voice of ethno-religious hatred, Mandalay-based monk Ashin<br />
Wirathu, said during an interview with ISCI in 2013, ‘In our society, monks are teachers of society’. 168<br />
166 Walton M J and Hayward S, ‘Contesting Buddhist Narratives’, p. 30.<br />
167 Unpublished interview with Ven Pannasiha, Yangon, 19 August 2015. Interviewed and shared by Al Jazeera.<br />
168 Interview with Wirathu in Mandalay, 20 January 2013.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Indeed, in recent years significant sections of the Sangha have exploited their position to propagate<br />
anti-Islamic racist terror and polarising propaganda.<br />
The power and authority of monks to mobilise large swathes of the Myanmar population has not been<br />
lost on the government. Testimony from monks and former monks acquired by ISCI reveal the conscious<br />
manipulation of the Sangha by President Thein Sein’s government:<br />
Ma Ba Tha and 969 [two prominent nationalist movements] are controlled by the military and<br />
when it wants a problem to take place, at the right moment, like turning on a water faucet, it will<br />
turn it on when it wants and turn it off when it doesn’t. It’s an ember that it’s keeping so that it<br />
can start a flame when necessary. 169<br />
The evidence points to an insecure military that fears displacement by the democratic transition process,<br />
and civil unrest is seen to provide an opportunity to exercise military power and authority.<br />
Despite their own disenfranchisement in 1946 170 , the Sangha remain a political force and have played a<br />
somewhat contradictory role in Burmese politics - sometimes bravely resisting the regime (for example,<br />
leading the 2007 Saffron Revolution and the Letpadaung mine protests of 2012); sometimes serving as a<br />
government mouthpiece for extremist nationalist and racist ideology.<br />
According to one monk, himself a critic of both Wirathu and the government:<br />
Behind this issue, the government systematically prepared and incited riots in places like<br />
Mandalay and Meiktila with monks who are their pawns and who have relationship with them…<br />
the events that started in Rakhine are suspicious. It has political instigations. 171<br />
Leading up to November 2015 and what could be Myanmar’s most free and fair elections since 1990,<br />
monks are playing an increasingly powerful role in the promotion of anti-Muslim, specifically anti-<br />
Rohingya sentiment under the guise of protecting the ‘national race and religion’. Ma Ba Tha, for example,<br />
is encouraging people to vote with a ‘nationalist spirit’ 172 for candidates who ‘will not let our race and<br />
religion disappear’. 173 The government, with its eyes set firmly on the polls, has encouraged this rising<br />
extremism, offering public support to leading nationalist monks. The increasingly powerful, staunchly<br />
nationalistic Buddhist movements have the potential to radically influence large sectors of Myanmar<br />
society. Nowhere is tension between Buddhists and Muslims, particularly the Rohingya, stronger than in<br />
the border state of Rakhine, widely perceived as Myanmar’s ‘last frontier’ of Buddhism.<br />
169 Interview with former leading monk A, 26 June 2015 Yangon. Interviewed and shared by Al Jazeera.<br />
170 Larsson, T, ‘Monkish Politics in Southeast Asia: Religious disenfranchisement in comparative and theoretical perspective’,<br />
Modern Asian Studies, 49(1), 2015, pp. 40-82<br />
171 Unpublished interview with Ven Pannasiha, August 19 2015, Yangon. Interviewed and shared by Al Jazeera.<br />
172 Zaw, J and Lewis, S, ‘Hardline Monks turn up Political Heat Ahead of Myanmar Elections’, UCA News, 22 June 2015:<br />
http://www.ucanews.com/news/hardline-monks-turn-up-political-heat-ahead-of-myanmar-elections/73822. Accessed<br />
10 October 2015.<br />
173 Lewis, S, ‘Buddhist Monks Seek to Ban Schoolgirls from Wearing Headscarves’, The Guardian, 22 June 2015:<br />
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/22/buddhist-monks-seek-to-ban-schoolgirls-from-wearing-headscarves?<br />
CMP=share_btn_fb. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
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3. STIGMATISATION AND DEHUMANISATION<br />
Preachers of hate: 969 and Ma Ba Tha<br />
The two most prominent nationalist movements within the Sangha are 969 and Ma Ba Tha. Both espouse<br />
a particularly virulent form of extreme, anti-Islamic nationalism and focus their campaigns on the protection<br />
of race (Burman) and religion (Buddhism).<br />
969 is an assortment of monks and their followers, bound by an extreme form of ethno-religious<br />
nationalism underpinned by an ideological hatred of Islam. Wirathu is the group’s most prominent spokesperson.<br />
174 Wildly anti-Muslim in his sermons, he was imprisoned in 2003 by the military junta for inciting<br />
violence against Muslims in Mandalay and for challenging the dictatorship. 175 He served nine years before<br />
being released under an amnesty in 2012. He has continued to preach hatred ever since.<br />
Another monk, jailed with Wirathu, described a special relationship the Myanmar intelligence service<br />
developed with Wirathu in prison – most especially providing him with food from outside the prison. 176<br />
Wirathu denies that the 969 movement is responsible for the violence against the Rohingya, but openly<br />
calls for boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses, describes mosques as ‘enemy bases’, warns Buddhists<br />
to protect their women from Muslim rapists, and was a vocal proponent of a law restricting marriages<br />
between Buddhists and Muslims. 177<br />
Many of Wirathu’s claims centre on the idea that Muslims are significantly wealthier than their Buddhist<br />
counterparts and that this economic dominance is part of a conspiracy to Islamicise the country:<br />
Muslims have a lot of money and no one knows where that money mountain is. They show<br />
that money to attract our young women…That money will be used to get a Buddhist-Burmese<br />
woman, and she will very soon be coerced or even forced to convert to Islam…and the children<br />
born of her will become Bengali Muslims and the ultimate danger to our Buddhist nation, as<br />
they will eventually destroy our race and religion. Once they become overly populous, they will<br />
overwhelm us and take over our country and make it an evil Islamic nation. 178<br />
Wirathu’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is directly reflected in Rakhine nationalist discourse, which suggests that<br />
business ambition and success is part of a wider Muslim strategy to dominate Rakhine state through<br />
the luring and forced conversion of Rakhine women. Such ideas were frequently cited by Rakhine<br />
interviewees:<br />
Muslim people came here with a lower standing. They are working class, but now they are<br />
trying to become upper class. Muslims started the conflict and. they are funded by international<br />
organisations. They tried to marry Arakanese girls with the intention of increasing their popu-<br />
174 Kyaw, N. N. claims that, “although he does not hold any official position in the 969 movement, he is widely regarded as the<br />
movement’s de facto leader or most important propagandist”. See Kyaw, N. N., ‘Islamophobia in Buddhist Myanmar’, p. 14.<br />
175 Interview with Wirathu in Mandalay, 20 January 2013. He accused the government of engaging in corrupt business<br />
transactions with Muslim businessmen in the transportation sector.<br />
176 Unpublished interview with Tin Aye Kyu, Mandalay, 27 July 2015. Interviewed and shared by Al Jazeera.<br />
177 Kaplan, S, ‘The serene-looking Buddist monk accused of inciting Burma’s sectarian violence’, The Washington Post,<br />
27 May 2015: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/05/27/the-burmese-bin-laden-fueling-therohingya-migrant-crisis-in-southeast-asia/.<br />
Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
178 Hla Oo, ‘Boycott Muslim Businesses: Nationalist-Monk Shin Wirathu’, Hla Oo’s Blog, 8 March 2013: http://hlaoo1980.blogspot.<br />
ca/2013/03/boycott-muslim-businesses-nationalist.html. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
lation in Rakhine state… The government must not give Muslim people citizenship. 179<br />
The exterior of Wirathu’s Mandalay monastery displays posters that depict destroyed temples and<br />
massacred bodies – historical violence that he claims was perpetrated by Muslims against Buddhists. 180<br />
In 2013 he explained to a BBC reporter:<br />
These pictures are here to protect our religion and our national interest… If we do not protect<br />
our own people we will become weak, and we will face more mass killings of this kind when<br />
they grow to outnumber us. Muslims are only well behaved when they are weak… When they<br />
are strong they are like a wolf or a jackal, in large packs they hunt down other animals. 181<br />
These comments echo closely those of an ANP spokesperson interviewed in the course of this<br />
research. 182 In response to a question by ISCI on the possibility of future violence, he said:<br />
When the international community gives them [Rohingya] a lot of food and donations they will<br />
grow fat and become stronger, they will become more violent.<br />
In June 2013 another charismatic 969 leader, Ashin Wimala Biwuntha, addressed an audience in<br />
Mawlamyine:<br />
We Buddhists are like people in a boat that is sinking. If this does not change, our race and<br />
religion will soon vanish. 183<br />
Attempts have been made to bully and intimidate perceived supporters of the Rohingya. In January 2015,<br />
for instance, Wirathu publicly attacked and insulted the UN Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Yanghee Lee,<br />
during a rally, for her criticism of Myanmar’s four ‘race protection laws’ (see below). He said:<br />
We have explained about the race protection law, but the bitch criticised the laws without<br />
studying them properly. Don't assume that you are a respectable person because of your<br />
position. For us, you are a whore. 184<br />
ISCI found widespread support for Wirathu, including in national and Rakhine state government, among<br />
Rakhine nationalists and, particularly troubling, in Myanmar’s historically courageous human rights<br />
community (including the 88 Generation pro-democracy group).<br />
The government has, since 2012, afforded considerable protection to the Sangha’s promulgation of race<br />
and religious hatred. According to Tha Kha Na, a former student of Wirathu’s, ‘Ma Ba Tha has become “an<br />
organization supported by the State”.’ 185<br />
179 Rakhine man, 50 years old, interviewed in Sittwe township, 5 December 2014.<br />
180 ISCI researcher observations January 2013.<br />
181 Fisher, J, ‘Myanmar’s Extremist Monk’, BBC World, 1 September 2013: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSihfWY41So.<br />
Accessed 12 October 2015.<br />
182 Interview conducted in Sittwe on 21 January 2015.<br />
183 Kyaw Zwa Moe, ‘A Radically Different Dhamma’, The Irrawaddy, 22 June, 2013: http://www.irrawaddy.org/magazine/<br />
a-radically-different-dhamma.html. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
184 ‘UN condemns Myanmar monk Wirathu’s “sexist” comments’, BBC, 22 January 2015: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/<br />
world-asia-30928744. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
185 Unpublished interview with monk Tha Kha Na, Yangon, 30 June 2015. Interviewed and shared by Al Jazeera.<br />
62
3. STIGMATISATION AND DEHUMANISATION<br />
Indeed, to date there have been no legal ramifications for the political interventions made by nationalist<br />
monks, and 969 appears to be openly supported by government officials. Following the publication in 2013<br />
of an article in Time magazine depicting Wirathu as a Buddhist terrorist, the presidential office released<br />
a statement criticising the magazine for undermining ‘efforts to rebuild trust between faiths and that the<br />
monk's order was striving for peace and prosperity’. 186 It went on to state that 969 ‘is just a symbol of peace’<br />
and Wirathu is ‘a son of Lord Buddha’. Unsurprisingly, the offending issue of Time was banned in Myanmar.<br />
In an interview with ISCI researchers, Wirathu claimed that he has been involved in ‘nationalistic affairs<br />
of politics’ since his release from prison in January 2012. 187 He reported that his relationship with the<br />
government had initially been difficult, with permission for his sermons sometimes withdrawn.<br />
The relationship improved, however, in 2012, notably following the violence in Rakhine state, when it<br />
became clear that Wirathu was an ally in the government’s plans to excise the Rohingya from Myanmar’s<br />
political and social landscape. Wirathu told ISCI in 2013:<br />
At the time I arranged those demonstrations [against the OIC opening an office in Myanmar]<br />
very carefully, very peacefully, so as not to become violent. Since that time, the government understood<br />
my objective. Some politicians are creating demonstrations that get violent – but I am<br />
not like that. I also object to those who are violent because I am also afraid of the army seizing<br />
power again. So the government realised my attitude and accepted me.<br />
Following the boat crisis in May 2015 Wirathu warned the government not to allow those recently rescued<br />
from the sea to remain in Myanmar. He said:<br />
They might let them just go into the villages… If they do that, then they will launch a jihad<br />
against the local Rakhine Buddhists. 188<br />
The other powerful nationalist grouping of monks, Ma Ba Tha, was launched during a meeting of<br />
thousands of Buddhist monks, including members of 969, in Mandalay on 27 June 2014. 189 Ma Ba Tha<br />
is more explicitly political and centralised than 969 and is well known for anti-Muslim activities and<br />
ideology. Charged with ‘protecting and promoting’ Buddhism, it also demonises Islam as the greatest<br />
threat to Buddhist Myanmar. The leaders portray Islam as ‘culturally inimical to Burmese values (focusing<br />
particularly on the treatment of women) inherently violent and driven by an agenda to take over the<br />
country, region, and globe’. 190<br />
A senior Ma Ba Tha monk interviewed by ISCI expressed concerns of Muslim expansionism:<br />
I heard that some Muslim extremists are demanding autonomous Muslim villages, i.e. in<br />
Maungdaw and Buthidaung where there is a Muslim majority. This is dangerous for authorities and<br />
Buddhists. Because Buddhists then feel afraid and like they have to leave because of strong cultural<br />
186 ‘Burmese leader defends “anti Muslim” monk Ashin Wirathu’, BBC, 24 June 2013: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worldasia-23027492.<br />
Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
187 Interview with Wirathu in Mandalay, 20 January 2013.<br />
188 Zaw, J and Lewis, S, ‘Hardline Monks turn up Political Heat Ahead of Myanmar Elections’.<br />
189 ‘Myanmar Buddist Monks Launch Group for “Defending Religion”’, Radio Free Asia, 15 January 2014: http://www.rfa.org/<br />
english/news/myanmar/buddhist-congress-01152014180734.html/. Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
190 Walton M J and Hayward S, ‘Contesting Buddhist Narratives’, p. 2.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
differences. You cannot tame Muslim youth because they don’t respect monks like Buddhists do. 191<br />
Sensationalised sermons recount stories of Muslim men forcing their Buddhist wives to convert to Islam,<br />
and reinforce the notion that a Muslim conspiracy, backed by foreign Islamic countries, exists to take over<br />
Myanmar through economic accumulation and interfaith marriage. Sermons claim that Myanmar is at risk<br />
of being overrun by Islam. 192<br />
On 20 and 21 June 2015, Ma Ba Tha held a conference in Yangon to work on policies to protect Buddhism.<br />
They urged the regime to place further restrictions on Muslims, including a ban on girls wearing headscarves<br />
in schools. 193<br />
The Rohingya, many of whom practice a more visible form of Islam than Kaman or other non-Rohingya<br />
Muslims throughout Myanmar, and who reside largely in Buthidaung and Maungdaw, are deemed by these<br />
monks to pose the ultimate threat to Myanmar Buddhism.<br />
The use of music and other cultural forms to stir up hatred, also a common feature of genocide, is<br />
prevalent in Myanmar. A popular song entitled ‘Song to Whip Up Religious Blood’ is often played at 969<br />
rallies. The lyrics refer to people who ‘live in our land, drink our water, and are ungrateful to us’. The<br />
chorus is repeated over and over, ‘We will build a fence with our bones if necessary’. 194<br />
Extremist voices are amplified through traditional platforms such as leaflets and journals, but also through<br />
DVD and online platforms, including popular social media such as Facebook that provide easy and wide<br />
dissemination. The accuracy of the claims made through these media is rarely questioned given the moral<br />
authority of the monks.<br />
Evidence of the influence of 969 and Ma Ba Tha is apparent in statements by members of the public.<br />
An interviewee from a Rakhine village next to a Rohingya village on the outskirts of Sittwe told ISCI:<br />
I think Islam is bad… I watched a DVD from 969… In the DVD Wirathu talks about how Muslims<br />
are bad. He interprets that Muslims are killing cows and if Muslims kill cows they will also kill<br />
Buddhists. The voice of the singing of the Muslims in the DVD is very similar to the voices I hear<br />
coming from the Mosque in that village [neighbouring village],which makes me afraid. There<br />
are many pictures on the CD of Muslims killing Buddhists. I trust Wirathu as he is a senior monk<br />
and I think he is a defender of Buddhism. 195<br />
At a protest in Yangon on 28 May 2015 people gathered to denounce the international community’s<br />
challenge to Myanmar for persecuting its Rohingya minority. Ma Ba Tha-affiliated monk U Pamaukkha ad<br />
191 Interview with prominent Ma Ba Tha monk, 19 November 2014, Yangon.<br />
192 Galache, C. S., ‘Who are the monks behind Burma’s “969” campaign?’ DVB News, 10 May 2013: http://www.dvb.no/<br />
uncategorized/the-monks-behind-burma%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%9C969%E2%80%9Dmovement-2/28079. Accessed<br />
11 October 2015.<br />
193 Lewis, S, ‘Buddhist monks seek to ban schoolgirls from wearing headscarves in Burma’, The Guardian, 22 June 2015:<br />
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/22/buddhist-monks-seek-to-ban-schoolgirls-from-wearing-headscarves.<br />
Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
194 Kaplan, S, ‘The serene-looking Buddhist monk accused of inciting Burma’s sectarian violence’, The Washington Post,<br />
27 May 2015: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/05/27/the-burmese-bin-laden-fueling-therohingya-migrant-crisis-in-southeast-asia/.<br />
Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
195 Young woman, interviewed in Rakhine village, Sittwe, 27 November 2014.<br />
64
3. STIGMATISATION AND DEHUMANISATION<br />
dressed the crowd while members of local 969 branches wore T-shirts declaring ‘Boat people are not<br />
Myanmar’. Wirathu was not present, but DVDs featuring his sermons were freely distributed. 196 Ko Thar<br />
Wa, one of the five spokespeople officially permitted to speak to media at the rally, expressed sympathy<br />
for the migrants, would-be asylum seekers and trafficking victims who had died at sea and in<br />
camps. However, he argued this should not mean that Myanmar resettles people from Bangladesh.<br />
In an interview with ISCI, a prominent Ma Ba Tha monk attacked the international concern expressed over<br />
the Rohingya from Myanmar, adding:<br />
The Muslim population is increasing and other religions are becoming diminished. Jihad is<br />
taking over. They behead people. 197<br />
As the November 2015 elections draw closer, nationalist monks are becoming increasingly political. In<br />
Rakhine state, where historic wounds are very real and economic and cultural grievances against the<br />
Myanmar State remain, extremist anti-Islamic rhetoric is used to justify the Rakhine Buddhist mission as<br />
protectors of Myanmar’s ‘western gate’. In early June, Ma Ba Tha warned that if a political party did not<br />
support ‘Buddhism’ it would urge voters to boycott that party in the election. 198<br />
In July 2015, pamphlets containing the Ma Ba Tha symbol were circulated at a charity event. They warned<br />
people not to vote for the NLD as to do so would endanger the country and the Buddhist faith because the<br />
NLD is an anti-nationalist organisation that opposed the four race and religion bills (see below). 199<br />
Yangon-based Ma Ba Tha leader U Pamaukkha told local media in June that Ma Ba Tha, with members in<br />
over half of Myanmar’s cities, could ‘quickly mobilise’ a campaign against any party that was insufficiently<br />
supportive of Buddhism. 200<br />
Buddhist extremism, with its public expressions of race and religious hatred, is openly tolerated and<br />
encouraged, while those seen to criticise Buddhism have been subject to harsh criminal penalties,<br />
including imprisonment. For example, a court in Bago, a region near Yangon, jailed a Muslim man for<br />
two years in April 2013 after he removed a 969 sticker from a betel-nut shop. He was sentenced under<br />
a section of Myanmar's colonial-era Penal Code, which outlaws ‘deliberate and malicious acts intended<br />
to outrage religious feelings’. 201 Similarly, in March 2015 New Zealander Phil Blackwood and his two<br />
Myanmar colleagues Tun Thurein and Htut Ko Ko Lwin were sentenced to two and a half years in prison<br />
with hard labour. Their crime was to have promoted their Yangon bar with a psychedelic image of Buddha<br />
wearing headphones 202 .<br />
196 Wa Lone, ‘Nationalists say no to foreign pressure’, Myanmar Times, 28 May 2015: http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/<br />
national-news/yangon/14718-nationalists-say-no-to-foreign-pressure.html. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
197 Interview with prominent Ma Ba Tha monk, 19 November 2014, Yangon.<br />
198 Moe Myint, ‘Ma Ba Tha Embraces Political Fray, Risking Election Year Sanction’, The Irrawaddy, 9 June 2015: http://www.<br />
irrawaddy.org/burma/ma-ba-tha-embraces-political-fray-risking-election-year-sanction.html. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
199 Salai Thant Zin, ‘NLD Accuses Ma Ba Tha of Defamation at Charity Shindig’, The Irrawaddy, 24 July 2015: http://www.<br />
irrawaddy.org/burma/nld-accuses-ma-ba-tha-of-defamation-at-charity-shindig.html. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
200 Popham, P, ‘Burma’s “great terror” moves a step closer as Taliban urges Rohingya to “take up the sword”’, The Independent,<br />
14 June 2015: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/burmas-great-terror-moves-a-step-closer-as-talibanurges-rohingya-to-take-up-the-sword-10319254.html.<br />
Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
201 Marshall, A, ‘Special Report: Myanmar gives official blessing to anti-Muslim monks’, Reuters, 27 June 2013: http://uk.reuters.<br />
com/article/2013/06/27/us-myanmar-969-specialreport-idUSBRE95Q04720130627. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
202 ‘Burma jails New Zealand bar manager over 'insulting' Buddha images’ 17 March 2015 , The Guardian<br />
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/17/burma-jails-new-zealand-bar-manager-over-insulting-buddha-images.<br />
Accessed 12 October 2015.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
This level of religious discrimination indicates complicity, if not intentional approval, on the part of<br />
the state authorities to foster religious and ethnic divisions, which in Rakhine state are contributing<br />
to genocidal processes. An even more powerful illustration of the role of the state is the treatment of<br />
moderate monks who denounce anti-Muslim extremism.<br />
In February 2015, the State Sangha Maha Nayaka Committee, a government-appointed body of highranking<br />
Buddhist monks that regulates the Buddhist clergy, imposed a nationwide ban on the charismatic<br />
Buddhist monk U Pinnyasiha for ‘speaking out of line with Buddhist doctrine and not following the instructions<br />
of his seniors.’ U Pinnyasiha, also known as Shwe Nya Wa Sayadaw, had previously criticised<br />
the 969 movement as anti-Muslim and in 2013 he calmed communal violence between Buddhists and<br />
Muslims in Meiktila. In relation to tensions between Buddhists and Muslims U Pinnyasiha argued:<br />
The way of Buddhism is saving people, helping the people, giving loving kindness to all the<br />
people. [We should not] take account of the skin colour or the particular religion of people, just<br />
give them loving kindness. People who refuse to give loving kindness to certain sorts of people<br />
are going against the way of Buddhism. 203<br />
On 2 June 2015 Htin Lin Oo, writer and former NLD information officer, was sentenced to two years’<br />
imprisonment with hard labour by a court in Sagaing region for ‘insulting religion’. 204 His lawyer claims<br />
the court was afraid of the monks, given that they, along with nationalist activists, had been demonstrating<br />
outside the court demanding a harsh sentence. 205 Htin Lin Oo’s ‘crime’ was to suggest that extreme<br />
nationalist ideology was not compatible with Buddhism. A video of Htin Lin Oo’s speech was posted<br />
online, encouraging complaints from monks linked to Ma Ba Tha. This prompted the local government’s<br />
religious affairs officer to file a legal complaint against Htin Lin Oo, which ultimately led to his sentencing.<br />
Such action contrasts starkly with the government permitting the leaders of 969 to deliver provocative<br />
sermons in the northern Rakhine state towns of Buthidaung and Maungdaw in December 2013. 206<br />
203 Popham, P, ‘Burma’s opposition demands government gives citizenship to Rohingya refugees adrift on the Andaman Sea’,<br />
The Independent, 19 May 2015: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/burmas-opposition-demands-government-gives-citizenship-to-rohingya-refugees-adrift-on-the-andaman-sea-10262125.html.<br />
Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
NB the NLD came out a few days later and said this was not their official line.<br />
204 Amnesty International, ‘Myanmar: Guilty verdict for “insulting religion” must be overturned immediately’, Press Release,<br />
2 June 2015: https://www.amnesty.org/press-releases/2015/06/myanmar-guilty-verdict-for-insulting-religion-must-beoverturned-immediately/.<br />
Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
205 ,Lewis, S,‘Nationalism and Religious Conservatism, a Toxic Mix in Myanmar’, Nikkei Asian Review, 18 June 2015:<br />
http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Nationalism-and-religious-conservatism-a-toxic-mix-in-Myanmar?<br />
page=2. Accessed 10 October 2010.<br />
206 Weng, L, ‘Extremist Monks Hold Talks Throughout Strife-Torn Arakan State’, The Irrawaddy, 26 December, 2013:<br />
http://www.irrawaddy.org/burma/extremist-monks-hold-talks-throughout-strife-torn-arakan-state.html, Accessed<br />
7 October 2015.<br />
66
3. STIGMATISATION AND DEHUMANISATION<br />
Rakhine monk on the outskirts of Sittwe, December 2014<br />
67
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
68
4. HARASSMENT, VIOLENCE AND TERROR<br />
Boat departure beach near Ohn Daw Gyi fishing village<br />
At this stage, policies are aimed at forcing the out-group to leave, rather than killing it outright.<br />
Those who cannot flee into exile are subject to social exclusion. This exclusion marks a<br />
much more important step towards extermination than exile, because isolating the victimized<br />
population people within the “normalized” society does not solve the dispute between the same<br />
and different, but simply creates a need in the minds of the authorities to find a “final solution”.<br />
(Feierstein) 207<br />
207 Feierstein, D, Genocide as Social Practice, p. 114.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
As of June 2015 the UNHCR estimates that over 150,000 people have fled from the Myanmar/Bangladesh<br />
border area since January 2012. 208<br />
In the first six months of 2015 an estimated 31,000 people fled Myanmar and Bangladesh. 209 The main<br />
departure point in Sittwe is the beach near Ohn Daw Gyi West, a fishing village adjacent to what is known<br />
as Coconut Village. There, within full view of a police outpost, observed by ISCI researchers, ISCI was<br />
told the Rohingya board small boats that take them to larger boats waiting out at sea. Camp residents<br />
reported that traffickers pay the police to look the other way.<br />
The Myanmar State consistently denies that conditions in Rakhine state are forcing Rohingya to flee. 210<br />
For example, Rakhine state’s then Chief Minister Maung Maung Ohn said in June 2015:<br />
Even though we try to stop the smuggling and trafficking, they are still leaving of their free will<br />
through their own connections… It does not make sense that the boat people are fleeing from<br />
the camps because Myanmar is torturing them. We might have our weak points but that doesn't<br />
cause them to flee. 211<br />
The truth is that the Rohingya have such wretched lives, stripped of all human dignity, that tens of<br />
thousands of them have felt they have no choice but to flee. One woman, speaking while weeping,<br />
described to ISCI the misery her family and community endure, how they have no medical care, not<br />
enough food, and that their children have no education opportunities. 212<br />
Institutionalised discrimination<br />
The harassment, violence and terror experienced by the Rohingya have their roots in successive and<br />
well-documented discriminatory State policies.<br />
ISCI interviews and observations reveal that in parts of Rakhine state the process of institutionalised<br />
discrimination began over 25 years ago when Muslim businesses were slowly but systematically<br />
driven from town centres, and Rohingya were removed from civil service positions. An elder from Aung<br />
Mingalar ghetto described his own experience:<br />
I am a native [of] Kyauk Taw township, in 1983 in the market there – there were 43 Rohingya<br />
shops – without any reason the government confiscated the shops and expelled the Rohingya. In<br />
1992 I came to Sittwe and opened a pharmacy shop in Sittwe market. During the violence my<br />
208 UNHCR, South-East Asia Irregular Maritime Movements, January – November 2014, indicates that between January 2012 and<br />
November 2014 over 120,000 had fled, URL no longer available, accessed March 2015; UNHCR, South East Asia Irregular<br />
Maritime Movements, April - June 2015, http://www.unhcr.org/53f1c5fc9.html, which claims around 31,000 fled in the first<br />
half of 2015.<br />
209 UNHCR, ‘UNHCR urges States to help avert Bay of Bengal boat crisis in coming weeks’, Briefing Notes, 28 August, 2015:<br />
http://www.unhcr.org/55e063359.html. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
210 ‘Beaten and starving, some Rohingya flee boats, return to camps’, The Straits Times, 21 May, 2015: http://www.straitstimes.<br />
com/news/asia/south-east-asia/story/beaten-and-starving-some-rohingya-flee-boats-return-camps-20150521. Accessed<br />
10 October 2015.<br />
211 ‘Hundreds of Migrants Waiting Repatriation’, Mizzima, 18 June, 2015: http://www.mizzima.com/news-domestic/hundredsmigrants-waiting-repatriation.<br />
Accessed 7 October 2015.<br />
212 Interview conducted in Sittwe’s IDP camps on 10 December 2014.<br />
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4. HARASSMENT, VIOLENCE AND TERROR<br />
shop was taken by the state government… My property is not important. I’m very sad and more<br />
concerned about the loss of historical mosques. 213<br />
Mosque fallen into disrepair, outskirts of Sittwe, November 2014<br />
In Mrauk U, the de-Islamification of town centres in the 1990s was accompanied by the destruction of<br />
mosques by the Myanmar military.<br />
Across Myanmar, Muslim populations are under state surveillance. ISCI obtained leaked evidence from<br />
the state government of a predominantly Christian region describing the current level of overall surveillance<br />
of Muslims nationwide. In a series of communications from the state’s Religious Affairs office to the<br />
township’s State Police Officer, 214 concern is raised over the movement of Muslim families into a village in<br />
the township and a teashop that opened in the same village by a Muslim police sergeant which is visited<br />
by Muslim families, and a religious teacher. The letter requests an investigation into whether the teashop<br />
is in fact a mosque. 215<br />
213 Elder, Aung Mingalar ghetto, 29 January 2015.<br />
214 Leaked document 4: Letter from the [REDACTED] State Religious Affairs Office to [REDACTED] State Police Office, 14 March<br />
2013.<br />
215 Leaked document 5: Letters from District General Administration Department, [REDACTED] District, [REDACTED] to Township<br />
Administrator, [REDACTED. Letter No. 100/1-1/U1 (4643), ‘Matter relating to people of Islamic faith’, 12 September 2013.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Compelling evidence also suggests that since the 1990s, local authorities have used the justification of<br />
‘population explosion’ to impose severe restrictions relating to marriage, birth control, child rights and<br />
travel on the Muslim residents of Rakhine state. 216 The use of forced contraceptives was reported as early<br />
as 1995, when a UNHCR official informed Human Rights Watch that Ministry of Health officials were using<br />
contraceptive injections on returning Rohingya refugees. 217<br />
In 1994 the authorities ceased issuing birth certificates to Rohingya babies. Many Rohingya parents<br />
have been prevented from complying with other registration procedures for their children because of<br />
restrictions on movement and lack of awareness and resources. 218 Punishment for the violation of childbirth<br />
restrictions can result in imprisonment of up to 10 years. Children whose birth is considered to have<br />
violated these restrictions are ‘blacklisted’ and thus denied many basic services.<br />
Race and religion laws<br />
The State has long driven Rohingya-targeted policies of cultural and political exclusion. For example, on<br />
1 May 2005 the Maungdaw Township Peace and Development Council released Regional Order 1/2005,<br />
outlining a number of restrictions on marriage and mandating that ‘those who have permission to marry<br />
must limit the number of children, in order to control the birth rate….’ An addenda to this order instructed<br />
law enforcement officials to make ‘people use pills, injections, and condoms for birth control’. 219<br />
The most recent demonstration of institutionalised discrimination came with the passing of what are<br />
known as the ‘four laws to protect race and religion’ – the Population Control and Health Care Law (19<br />
May 2015), 220 Buddhist Women’s Special Marriage Law (7 July 2015), Monogamy Law (22 July 2015), 221<br />
and Religious Conversion Law (20 August 2015). 222<br />
The swift passing of these laws is seen as providing electoral advantage to the ruling USDP in the run-up<br />
to the November elections.<br />
The Population Control and Health Care Bill was passed into law 10 days before the 2014 census results<br />
were released. The law, promoted by nationalist Buddhist groups, allows local authorities to request the<br />
President to introduce birth-spacing measures 223 if surveys in their area demonstrate that ‘resources are un<br />
216 Township Peace and Development Council, Maungdaw, Regional Order No. (1/2005) (1 May 2005), reproduced in Fortify<br />
Rights, Policies of Persecution, p. 33.<br />
217 Human Rights Watch, Burma: The Rohingya Muslims: Ending a Cycle of Exodus? (New York: Human Rights Watch, September<br />
1996). http://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/b/burma/burma969.pdf. Accessed 20 October 2015.<br />
218 See, for example: The Arakan Project, ‘Issues to be Raised Concerning the Situation of Stateless Rohingya Women in<br />
Myanmar (Burma)’, Submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), October 2008,<br />
p. 3. http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs6/CEDAW_Myanmar_AP_Submission-Final-Web.pdf.<br />
219 As cited by Fortify Rights, Policies of Persecution, p. 33.<br />
220 Dinmore, G and Shwe Yee Saw Myint, ‘President signs off on population control law’, Myanmar Times, 25 May 2015:<br />
http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/14648-president-signs-off-on-population-control-law.html. Accessed<br />
10 October 2015.<br />
221 Soe, P, ‘Monogamy Bill sails through Lower House’, DVB, 23 July 2015: http://www.dvb.no/news/monogamy-bill-sailsthrough-lower-house/55068;<br />
Solomon, F. ‘Burma Parliament Approves Contentious Race and Religion Bills’, The Irrawaddy,<br />
20 August 2015: http://www.irrawaddy.org/burma/burma-parliament-approves-contentious-race-and-religion-bills.html.<br />
Both accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
222 ‘Myanmar president signs two controversial religion bills’, dpa-international, 29 August 2015: http://www.dpa-international.<br />
com/news/asia/myanmar-president-signs-two-controversial-religion-bills-a-46437122.html. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
223 Whereby women must leave 36 months between the birth of children.<br />
72
4. HARASSMENT, VIOLENCE AND TERROR<br />
balanced because of a high number of migrants in the area, a high population growth rate and a high birth<br />
rate’. 224 Wirathu claimed that the law had the dual purpose of protecting women’s health and ‘stopping the<br />
Bengalis that call themselves Rohingya, who are trying to seize Rakhine state’. 225<br />
The Special Marriage Law 226 concerns all Myanmar Buddhist women aged 18 and over and their non-<br />
Buddhist husbands. The law permits township registrars to publicly display a couple’s application for<br />
marriage for 14 days, and permits any objections to the marriage to be taken to a local court. The law<br />
further requires that existing interfaith couples register their marriages; women under the age of 20<br />
obtain consent from their parents or legal guardian to marry a non-Buddhist; and non-Buddhist husbands<br />
respect the free practice of his spouse’s Buddhist religion and refrain from insulting the feelings of<br />
Buddhists. 227<br />
The Monogamy Law prohibits married persons entering into a second marriage or ‘unofficially’ living with<br />
another person whilst still married. Its targets are religious minorities where polygamy and extra-marital<br />
relationships are perceived to occur more frequently, 228 even though the Penal Code already criminalises<br />
polygamy. Rohingya men are frequently accused of having multiple wives who give birth to large<br />
numbers of children as part of the alleged strategy to ‘Islamicise’ Myanmar.<br />
The Religious Conversion Law establishes a state-governed procedure whereby those who seek to<br />
change their religion have to apply to township Religious Conversion Scrutinisation and Registration<br />
Boards made up of two local elders and five local officials appointed by township administrators. In<br />
addition, the law bans conversion with the intent to ‘insult, disrespect, destroy, or abuse a religion’ and<br />
prohibits people from bullying or enticing someone to convert or to deter them from doing so. 229<br />
The ‘Protection of Race and Religion Laws’ represent a very clear and disturbing expression of the<br />
institutionalisation of discrimination against Muslim communities. The justificatory rhetoric surrounding<br />
the introduction of the laws speaks to the increasing segregation and sense of otherness imposed upon<br />
Myanmar Muslims and particularly the Rohingya. The laws represent a formal commitment on the part of<br />
government to stigmatise, monitor and control Muslim cultural and reproductive practices.<br />
In June 2014 230 and January 2015 civil society groups released statements opposing Ma Ba Tha’s intermarriage<br />
law, 231 claiming it discriminated against women and ethnic minorities. In response, Ma Ba Tha<br />
labelled the groups ‘traitors on national affairs’ and attempted to undermine their credibility by suggesting<br />
224 Dinmore, G and Shwe Yee Saw Myint, ‘President signs off on population control law’, Myanmar Times, 25 May 2015.<br />
225 Ibid.<br />
226 ‘The Myanmar Buddhist Women’s Special Marriage Law (draft)’: http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs21/2015-Myanmar_<br />
Buddhist_Women_Special_Marriage_Bill.pdf. Accessed 12 October 2015.<br />
227 Human Rights Watch, ‘Burma: Reject Discriminatory Marriage Bill: Imperils Right to Marry Freely, Fuels Anti-Muslim Groups’,<br />
9 July 2015: https://www.hrw.org/news/2015/07/09/burma-reject-discriminatory-marriage-bill. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
228 Human Rights Watch, ‘Burma: Discriminatory Laws Could Stoke Communal Tensions’.<br />
229 Human Rights Watch, ‘Discriminatory Laws Could Stoke Communal Tensions’.<br />
230 ‘Religious Conversion Law Threatens Religious Freedom in Burma/Myanmar’, Burma Parternship, 12 June 2014:<br />
http://www.burmapartnership.org/2014/06/religious-conversion-law-threatens-religious-freedom-in-burmamyanmar/.<br />
Accessed 12 O ctober 2015.<br />
231 Roebuck, M, ‘Mass call from Myanmar’s civil society to drop “Nation, Race and Religion” bills’, Reliefweb, 28 January 2015:<br />
http://reliefweb.int/report/myanmar/mass-call-myanmar-s-civil-society-drop-nation-race-and-religion-bills. Accessed<br />
10 October 2015.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
they were influenced by foreign actors. 232 Prominent leaders of these CSOs reportedly received death<br />
threats following their public objections to the laws. 233<br />
Organised massacres: June 2012<br />
The institutionalised discrimination described above has formed the justificatory backdrop for organised<br />
violence against the Rohingya.<br />
The government portrayed the violence of 8-12 June 2012 in Rakhine state as spontaneous inter-communal<br />
fighting sparked by the rape and murder of a Buddhist woman, Ma Thida Htwe. However, evidence<br />
derived from ISCI interviews with Rakhine Buddhist perpetrators suggests that in fact the conflict<br />
involved planned, highly organised state-sanctioned attacks. A picture of local Rakhine politicians and<br />
civil society leaders arranging transport, coordinating the violence and providing refreshments for those<br />
preparing to attack Rohingya villages emerged from the interviews, though most interviewees were careful<br />
to conceal the identity of the organisers or claimed they had no knowledge of who they were.<br />
The violence was carried out with apparent impunity. It appears that not a single perpetrator from the<br />
Rakhine community has been prosecuted for their involvement in the massacres and arson attacks in<br />
Sittwe. When asked directly how many perpetrators had been successfully prosecuted for the June 2012<br />
violence in Sittwe, the Attorney General for Rakhine state said: ‘None … it happened at night time so there<br />
is no evidence’. 234 He reported that the police had closed all their investigations. Witness testimony suggests<br />
that state security forces were involved in extrajudicial killings, rape, sexual assault and torture. 235<br />
The June massacre of the Rohingya in 2012 was for all intents and purposes Rakhine state’s Kristalnacht<br />
– designed to terrorise and displace the local population as well as to test the response of higher<br />
government authorities. In Sittwe, the areas of Nasi and the Rohingya fishermen’s village were razed to<br />
the ground as the Muslim population was driven to the detention camp complex beyond Sittwe’s Bumay<br />
junction. The testimony collected from both Rakhine and Rohingya in and around Sittwe makes it possible<br />
to trace how the violence played out.<br />
Some days before the violence erupted, Rakhine activists sent letters to the administrators of the Rakhine<br />
village tracts in the Sittwe hinterland. The letters urged each household to send at least one man between<br />
the ages of 20 and 40 to participate in the planned attacks on Rohingya neighbourhoods, while others were<br />
to remain behind in order to defend their village in case of retaliatory attack. The men were to be ready on<br />
the morning of 8 June to be collected and bussed in to Sittwe. They were informed that it was their duty<br />
as Rakhine to participate in an attack on the Muslim population and so they armed themselves with knives<br />
and bamboo spears in anticipation of the arrival of ‘express buses’. Hundreds if not thousands of Rakhine<br />
232 Nyein Nyein, ‘Nationalist Monks Call NGO’s “Traitors” for Opposing Interfaith Marriage Bill’, The Irrawaddy, 12 May 2014:<br />
http://www.irrawaddy.org/burma/nationalist-monks-call-ngos-traitors-opposing-interfaith-marriage.html. Accessed 10<br />
October 2015.<br />
233 Thein, C, ‘Myanmar women object to proposed restrictions on interfaith marriage’, The Washington Post, 18 December 2014:<br />
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/religion/myanmar-women-object-to-proposed-restrictions-on-interfaithmarriage/2014/12/18/36fc82e6-86f6-11e4-abcf-5a3d7b3b20b8_story.html.<br />
Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
234 Interview with U La Thein, Rakhine state Attorney General, Sittwe, 17 February 2015.<br />
235 Human Rights Watch, ‘“All You Can Do is Pray.”’<br />
74
4. HARASSMENT, VIOLENCE AND TERROR<br />
men and women were transported to Sittwe by these buses. Some were dropped off near Nasi village<br />
and joined in the arson attacks on the houses there. Most Rohingya fled for their lives; some tried vainly<br />
to defend their homes and families. The Rakhine perpetrators were dropped off at the bus station and<br />
at various designated points around the town. They were instructed to block fleeing Rohingya from all<br />
routes except those that led to the diesel electricity generators and on toward the camp complex area.<br />
While in Sittwe, Rakhine perpetrators were given free meals and returned to their villages at around 4pm<br />
each day. The transport and catering required high levels of organisation and funding. Rohingya survivors<br />
and Rakhine participants identified local Rakhine businessmen, Rakhine civil society leaders and ANP<br />
politicians as the chief organisers.<br />
One man from a Rakhine village described his involvement on the attacks in downtown Sittwe, Nasi and<br />
Aung Mingalar as highly organised with a certain degree of compulsion:<br />
During June 2012, the express bus came to get every man to attack Sittwe. Every house had to<br />
go. If there were two people, one had to stay and one had to go. The administrator made this rule.<br />
Express buses took villagers from here and dropped at Sittwe bus station. Then, we were split<br />
up. The buses were free of charge... The organisers dropped us near Nasi. The main responsibility<br />
we had was to block the Muslims so that they could only exit from the generators... The<br />
administrators told us, as Rakhine, we had to go. Everybody was taking a stick so I took one too.<br />
We went on the second day of the conflict. We left at 9am and got back at 3 or 4pm. It was one<br />
day. I saw houses on fire. I didn’t see any injuries.<br />
All men in village went to participate in violence for three days. We rented busses and went with<br />
bamboo and knives to fight. We were afraid some people living downtown might be killed by<br />
Muslim people so we all rallied together to protect people from Kyauktaw and Rathidaung. We<br />
used boats and car, transport was free. Daily food – lunch and dinner was provided from a group<br />
of people downtown. People came to the village to invite us to go to Sittwe and fight. There was<br />
also fighting in Rathidaung and Rakhine people were killed. A group of Rakhine activists came<br />
to recruit us, I don’t want to give the name of the group. We needed to kill Muslim people because<br />
two-three Arakanese people were killed. 236<br />
There is compelling and corroborated evidence that the State did not intervene in any way until the fourth<br />
day of violence. A Rakhine man said:<br />
After three days the government prevented the situation from escalating so I did not need to<br />
keep going. The response was just and fair to both sides. The government could not maintain<br />
the situation well enough with just the police so they brought the military in. The military<br />
confiscated land, half the villagers have had land confiscated by the government. The land was<br />
used to set up military barracks. I disagree with this practice but during the conflict want to<br />
thank the military for their involvement. I don’t want to live together with Muslims because of<br />
the rape and killings. 237<br />
236 Par Ta Lay village, Rakhine state, 34-year-old Rakhine man, 5 December 2014.<br />
237 Rakhine man, interviewed in Par Teh Leh Rak village, Sittwe on 4 December 2015.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
In Thandoli’s June 2012 ‘battle of the creek’, police were reported as explicitly authorising Rakhine<br />
attacks on Rohingya. A Rakhine village administrator told researchers:<br />
People were invited to fight. I also joined the fight at Thandoli [Rohingya village]. They had a<br />
loud speaker, members of a group, but I don’t want to give the name of the individuals/group<br />
who came. I didn’t want to kill anyone because they were my workers [Muslims]. Nobody was<br />
injured from my village. 30-40 villagers from here went to fight. Three Rakhine were killed.<br />
I saw one body of a Muslim man who was killed. Fighting went on for 30 minutes. Villagers<br />
from here went to burn down the Muslim village with fire torches, with hay. We tried to burn<br />
the village in the first day but we couldn’t. Muslim villagers were shooting into the air so we<br />
were frightened and ran away. Thirty minutes later, we tried again and that time we ended up<br />
fighting each other. We had sticks and knives to fight.<br />
The police came, as well as a three star general, because I informed them that Rakhine had been<br />
killed. I told the police that we wanted to go back and fight. They [police] authorised us to attack<br />
the Muslim village after checking with us if we thought we had enough men to win, once we<br />
confirmed we did, they withdrew. The police allowed us to attack the Muslims. The police, they<br />
were from Sittwe. Many Muslim people fled when the attack happened. 238<br />
The evidence strongly suggests not only that a calculated decision was made by the State authorities to<br />
allow the massacres to take place, but also that security forces participated in some instances. This lends<br />
credence to the claim that the killings of Rohingya and the destruction of their neighbourhoods was both<br />
planned and managed by State authorities. One Rakhine villager told ISCI:<br />
The villagers from this village were involved in the fighting. I think that about 200 people went<br />
from my village out of a population of 1,500 … the express bus came to the entrance of the village<br />
and we all went to Ming Chin ... apparently the military police arrived and the villagers split up<br />
into small groups because the police shot into the air. We left the village at 9am and we were<br />
back on the express bus around 3-4pm. 239<br />
Rohingya eyewitnesses reported the involvement of large numbers of Rakhine women wielding knives<br />
and spears. According to one Aung Mingalar elder:<br />
Many Rakhine women were also involved, they were wearing short pants, they never wear<br />
these, not longi. I saw this with my own eyes. They had long knives and hand spears. There<br />
were maybe 20 – 30% women in Sittwe township.<br />
Many eyewitnesses described how the security forces failed to protect Rohingya and Kaman Muslims<br />
who called for assistance. Rather than defend those under attack, police were reported, in many<br />
instances, to have aided the attackers. One woman recounted her experience of police complicity in<br />
violence in October 2012:<br />
238 Rakhine man, aged 45, informal village administrator, interviewed in village on outskirts of Sittwe, 6 December 2014,<br />
239 Rakhine man, aged 52, interviewed on 5 December 2014.<br />
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4. HARASSMENT, VIOLENCE AND TERROR<br />
I saw Rakhine going and passing in front of my house with long knives and gasoline water…<br />
We called the police but they didn’t come quickly… later the police arrived at my house. Instead<br />
of accusing the Rakhine they accused us. I was badly injured and they killed my mother but<br />
the police ordered us from our house… they were not protecting us, the injured people instead<br />
they were protecting the Rakhine attackers. So the police were involved at the time, they were<br />
pointing their guns at us – at the injured. 240<br />
A Rohingya village headmaster told researchers not only of violence against the Rohingya but against<br />
moderate Rakhine and Chin who were seen to be assisting their Muslim neighbours:<br />
This was just like a genocide; they came to our houses just to finish everybody and everything.<br />
In Myebon, we were on the hilltop, and around the hill there were maybe 50,000 Rakhine<br />
surrounding us… Later they brought a gasoline petrol pump and they threw the petrol at<br />
houses… and then they burned, they set fire there, but because of our fortune and good luck the<br />
fire didn’t burn the IDP people area, the fire went over the other side... An ex-army man who<br />
was bringing the goods for the Rohingya people was attacked in front of the police station and<br />
he was beaten while helping the Bengali people… he's of Chin ethnicity and a Christian, his wife<br />
is Buddhist. 241<br />
Violence has continued sporadically throughout Rakhine state, making the threat of it part of the daily<br />
experience of the Rohingya. There is corroborated evidence that some of this violence is coordinated,<br />
between state security forces and the Rakhine. A confidential UN incident report dated 20 January<br />
2014 242 refers to multiple attacks in Dar Chee Yar Tan, including the alleged killing and abduction of 8<br />
Rohingya on or around 9 January 2014 when an armed Rakhine mob attacked a group of 44 Rohingya.<br />
An eyewitness was unable to determine if the attackers were police or armed civilians, however, the<br />
incident report referred to collusion between state security police and armed Rakhine men in an attack<br />
on 12 January 2014.<br />
240 Interview conducted in Sittwe, 17 November 2015.<br />
241 Interview village headmaster, 7 November 2014.<br />
242 UNHCR, Confidential Incident Report, 20 January 2014: http://genocidewatch.net/2015/07/06/myanmar-update-unchrreport-on-duchiridan/.<br />
Accessed 18 August 2015.<br />
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78
5. ISOLATION AND SEGREGATION<br />
Rohingya man, IDP camp, Sittwe, November 2014<br />
At this stage, the focus shifts to social and territorial planning … the goal … to demarcate a<br />
separate social, geographical. Economic, political and even ideological space for those who are<br />
‘different’ and at the same time to sever their social ties with the rest of society. (Feierstein) 243<br />
243 Feierstein, D, Genocide as Social Practice, p. 115.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
The forced movement in 2012 of some 138,000 Rohingya into a secure and isolated zone required<br />
high-level planning and coordination. The organised funnelling of those fleeing the violence and their<br />
burning villages created an exodus of Rohingya. They were marched through the main streets of Sittwe,<br />
many struggling to support those who were less able (including heavily pregnant women, the elderly and<br />
infirm) and carrying the few belongings they had managed to retrieve. Most of their possessions had been<br />
lost to the fires and subsequent looting.<br />
In shock, the Rohingya walked to their uncertain fate. Rakhine lined the roads, shouting abuse at the<br />
desperate men, women and children as they made their way to the perceived security of the camps. One<br />
of those fleeing told ISCI that some Rakhine threw rotten fruit at them as they passed; others smashed<br />
glass onto the road so that the Rohingya without shoes would suffer further. 244 All of this would have been<br />
in full view of the local police, military and political elite.<br />
Most of the Rohingya were herded into what is now the detention camp complex beyond Bumay Junction<br />
where they found shelter in schools and other administrative buildings, Rohingya villages and ‘host’<br />
communities. 245 The violence played out over three days before the authorities intervened, by which time<br />
the main objectives of the organisers had been accomplished. The social bonds between the communities<br />
had been severed and the Rohingya population had been terrorised, physically isolated and segregated.<br />
The impunity that followed effectively reassured the Rakhine activists who organised and participated<br />
in the violence that their actions were ‘justified’ and supported at the highest levels of government. This<br />
emboldened many to pursue their goal of the complete removal of the Rohingya from Rakhine state.<br />
Police buildings under construction adjacent to Rohingya detention camp complex, Sittwe, December 2014<br />
244 Interview with 51-year-old Rohingya man from Nasi, 6 November 2014, Sittwe.<br />
245 Host communities refer to established Rohingya villages hosting displaced Rohingya.<br />
80
5. ISOLATION AND SEGREGATION<br />
The Rakhine State Action Plan<br />
The Rakhine State Action Plan, 246 described by Human Rights Watch as ‘nothing less than a blueprint<br />
for permanent segregation and statelessness,’ 247 provides further evidence of the Myanmar State’s<br />
planned and institutionalized programme of discrimination against, and stigmatization and permanent<br />
segregation of, the Rohingya.<br />
The six-point plan primarily aims to control and contain the Rohingya population. 248 It outlines the<br />
activities required to operationalise the State’s key objectives of ‘preventing illegal aliens from<br />
entering Myanmar’; increasing border securitization; ensuring city, township and village security;<br />
preventing further violence in the state; and ‘restoring stability and calm’. The activities reveal an<br />
increasing and intrusive pattern of intelligence-gathering and state surveillance through, for example,<br />
‘nurturing and supporting suitable persons’ within communities and ensuring ‘the capacity to<br />
gather intelligence on activities of terrorist groups especially in the Maungdaw township’.<br />
In keeping with the plan, ISCI observed new fences had been constructed between December 2014<br />
and January 2015 in close proximity to Aung Mingalar Rakhine village, the Rohingya villages of Don<br />
Pyin and Mo La Wei, and inside Sittwe’s detention camp complex.<br />
The plan has no commitment to reuniting the two communities, nor any plan to re-introduce mixed<br />
schools or market places or for the return of Rohingya to higher education. There is no mention of<br />
curbing anti-Muslim demonstrations or of prohibiting the anti-Muslim and, specifically, anti-Rohingya<br />
hate speech endemic in the state.<br />
The plan is underlined by a singular commitment to remove ‘illegal Bengali immigrants’ from the<br />
purview of Myanmar responsibility.<br />
246 Myanmar Government, Rakhine State Action Plan: http://www.scribd.com/doc/244605800/Rakhine-Action-Plan-by-<br />
Myanmar-Government. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
247 Human Rights Watch, ‘Burma: Government Plan Would Segregate Rohingya’.<br />
248 The Rakhine State Action Plan addresses the 2013 recommendations of the Rakhine Investigative Commission set up by the<br />
President Thein Sein in the aftermath of the 2012 massacres. An unpublished extended version of Section 1 of the plan was<br />
shown to us by Fortify Rights.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Detention camps<br />
Unregistered Rohingya IDP camp, Sittwe<br />
The Rohingya IDP camps are referred to as detention camps in this report. This is effectively what they<br />
are for the Rohingya and the Kaman. This is not the case for the internally displaced Rakhine or Maramagyi<br />
who are free to leave and enter their camps at will. Rohingya and Kaman are confined to their<br />
camps and villages by the very real fear of violent attack from hostile Rakhine should they be found<br />
outside the camp confines and in some cases because of the presence of police and military security.<br />
Access to the camps and the ghetto is highly restricted and ISCI researchers had to employ persuasive<br />
methods to circumnavigate security forces. In the course of this research ISCI visited all of the IDP camps<br />
surrounding Sittwe, including two which housed Rakhine displaced from their homes in 2012, and one<br />
camp housing Maramagyi IDPs.<br />
ISCI researchers noted the recent and ongoing construction of a large police barracks in Sittwe, immediately<br />
adjacent to the camps housing the Rohingya. This and other means have been employed by the state<br />
to further securitise and isolate the Rohingya, specifically from international researchers and journalists.<br />
Prison villages<br />
The villages around Sittwe are of varying sizes (usually housing around 1,000 people) and are organised<br />
administratively into ‘village tracts’ of three to seven villages. The official Administrator of a tract is paid<br />
by the government and is usually Rakhine. Tracts can be a mix of ethnic villages and each village has an<br />
unpaid, ‘informal’ administrator who reports to the official Administrator. Some Rohingya villages north<br />
of downtown Sittwe have police stationed along the main road leading into them, restricting the movement<br />
of the Rohingya villagers. Rakhine villages have no such security arrangements. The host villages<br />
and Rohingya camp complex on the outskirts of Sittwe are adjacent to the University complex. Rakhine<br />
students are bussed to University on tuk-tuks and provided security as they travel past the Rohingya IDP<br />
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5. ISOLATION AND SEGREGATION<br />
camp complex – passing Muslims who were former students, but no longer allowed to attend university.<br />
There are two Buddhist temples inside the Rohingya camp complex, guarded by the military. A small<br />
Rakhine community continues to live within the Rohingya host village at Thae Chaung. Several young<br />
Rakhine men and women interviewed from this community in January 2015 told ISCI researchers that<br />
they are not afraid to live inside this Muslim enclave because the Rakhine here have been friendly neighbours<br />
to the Rohingya for as long as they can remember. These Rakhine are free to come and go, unlike<br />
their Muslim neighbours. The host community population at Thae Chaung has increased dramatically<br />
since June 2012 as a result of the influx of tens of thousands of Rohingya IDPs. The local market has<br />
grown as a result and Rohingya fishermen from around Sittwe now fish from one small inlet inside the<br />
camp complex. It is the only business that the Rohingya have been allowed to keep operational, albeit a<br />
fishing fleet of greatly reduced capacity.<br />
In a confidential telegram to Washington DC, in 2008, the US Embassy reported on a meeting with the<br />
UNHCR High Commissioner regarding the dire situation of the Rohingya:<br />
UNHCR staff based in Maungdaw reported that the protection situation in NRS is terrible;<br />
severe restrictions on the 750,000 Rohingya Muslims, who represent 85 percent of the total<br />
NRS population, continue. Over 90 percent of the Rohingyas are landless and 80 percent are<br />
illiterate. Malnutrition and infant mortality are higher in NRS than in other parts of Burma. The<br />
Rohingyas face severe restrictions including the lack of legal status and denial of citizenship; no<br />
freedom of movement, even between villages; burdensome marriage permission requirements;<br />
social prohibitions; and strict enforcement of prohibitions against unauthorized construction/<br />
repair of homes or religious buildings. Rohingyas who violate these restrictions face imprisonment<br />
and torture. Other human rights abuses include forced labor and widespread extortion,<br />
which exacerbate the poverty. 249<br />
Segregation between Rohingya and Rakhine villages is enforced by rigid travel restrictions, both locally<br />
and nationally. Rohingya in the north, where the segregation of Rakhine and Rohingya is not formally<br />
enforced, are required to gain permission to travel the hour long journey from Buthidaung to Maungdaw.<br />
Those wishing to travel between these towns must visit the immigration office and present their<br />
household documents and the receipt from their confiscated White Cards as well as provide details of<br />
name, address and destination. The permit takes around a day to process and costs 1,000 kyat [USD 93c].<br />
If granted permission they must upon arrival at their destination notify authorities there. 250 Several Muslims<br />
reported to ISCI on the long-standing discriminatory checks they had faced when travelling across<br />
Rakhine state borders. Behind these accounts are official policies of segregation as evidenced by, for<br />
example, a leaked letter from the Thandwe District General Administration Department to the Chairman<br />
of Township Traffic Lines Control committee (dated 24 October 2012) instructing that named bus routes<br />
between Thandwe, Taunggup and Yangon ‘must be strictly controlled to ensure that no Muslim is on<br />
board.’ 251<br />
249 UNHCR and Burma: NRS Presence at Risk: High Commisioner May Visit Telegram from US embassy Yangon 12 December<br />
2008, https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08RANGOON936_a.html.<br />
250 Francis Wade, unpublished field observations, October 2015. Reproduced with permission of author.<br />
251 Leaked Document 6: Letter from the Thandwe District General Administration Department to the Chairman of Township<br />
Traffic Lines Control committee, 24 October 2012.<br />
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ISCI found that Muslims are generally afraid to leave villages, not necessarily because they are physically<br />
restricted from leaving (police and military are only stationed outside some villages), but for fear<br />
of vio-lence outside. In one Kaman village ISCI visited, researchers were told that up to four Kaman in<br />
the village are able to access downtown Sittwe’s market because they look Rakhine. They visit two to<br />
three times per month and bring back supplies to sell to the rest of the villagers. One of these Kaman,<br />
interviewed in Sittwe area, 4 December 2015 described the fear associated with travelling to market:<br />
Before the conflict I could identify myself as Kaman when I went shopping, but now I cannot<br />
identify myself as such, because I would get attacked, I have to pretend to be a Rakhine Buddhist.<br />
I can go freely because they don’t know I’m Kaman so I can buy anything…I have to hide<br />
my religion…I feel afraid that someone will find out my identity when I go to the market. 252<br />
These fears are well founded. ISCI interviewed an elderly Kaman woman who, while visiting Sittwe<br />
market in 2013, was beaten so severely she lost consciousness. Her case reveals that the Kaman are as<br />
vulnerable to racist violence as the Rohingya. Before she lost consciousness she remembers the crowd<br />
shouting, ‘Beat her, beat her, beat the Kaman – Kaman is the same as ‘kalar’’. She was rescued by police<br />
who admonished her for entering the town “Kaman aren’t allowed to go to downtown Sittwe” they told her. 253<br />
The Rohingya village ISCI visited in Mrauk U is at the end of a village tract comprising four Rakhine villages<br />
and one Rohingya village, the latter separated from the neighbouring Rakhine village by a small stream.<br />
The only way ISCI could locate and access the village was by hiring bicycles and riding several kilometres<br />
across paddy fields and dirt paths with the navigational aid of an OCHA map. On the way the researchers<br />
were repeatedly told there was nothing of interest in the direction ahead and encouraged to turn back.<br />
Police were stationed at the only entrance to the Rohingya village and adjacent IDP camp. Upon arrival,<br />
the village administrator immediately notified the police by telephone that internationals had entered the<br />
village and within two hours a police vehicle arrived. A number of Rohingya in villages in the Mrauk U<br />
area were afraid to be interviewed unless explicit permission was given by the authorities.<br />
The ghetto: Aung Mingalar<br />
In Aung Mingalar, I heard the echoes of my childhood. You see, in 1944, as a Jew in Budapest,<br />
I too was a Rohingya. Much like the Jewish ghettos set up by Nazis around Eastern Europe<br />
during World War II, Aung Mingalar has become the involuntary home to thousands of families<br />
who once had access to health care, education and employment. Now, they are forced to remain<br />
segregated in a state of abject deprivation. The parallels to the Nazi genocide are alarming.<br />
(George Soros) 254<br />
Some 4,500 Rohingya remain in Sittwe. All are effectively imprisoned in the squalid, overcrowded ghetto<br />
of Aung Mingalar. Aung Mingalar is the most heavily militarized of the Rohingya areas in and around<br />
Sittwe, given its location in the heart of the capital and the fact that it has suffered from numerous<br />
252 Interview with young Kaman Sittwe area, 4 December 2015.<br />
253 Interview with elderly Kaman woman in Sittwe area, 4 December 2015.<br />
254 George Soros, speaking (by pre-recorded video) at The Oslo Conference to End Myanmar’s Persecution of the Rohingyas,<br />
26 May 2015.<br />
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5. ISOLATION AND SEGREGATION<br />
One of seven security checkpoints, Aung Mingalar Ghetto<br />
attempted attacks since 2012. Access to the ghetto is severely restricted; various security forces police<br />
the seven entry checkpoints into the neighbourhood. Permission to enter is rarely granted and suspicion<br />
of international visitors is high. ISCI researchers gained access and spent a day interviewing residents<br />
and observing the conditions there. ISCI’s researchers were followed closely by soldiers for the duration<br />
of the visit. On four separate occasions they were stopped by military security, questioned and asked to<br />
hand over passports.<br />
ISCI researchers observed a situation of systematic weakening based on a denial of health care, restriction<br />
of food and a complete loss of livelihoods. The residents of Aung Mingalar are not classified as IDPs<br />
and as such the authorities have denied humanitarian aid to the residents. Hunger and illness were visible<br />
throughout the ghetto and discussions with a wide range of residents revealed an increasingly desperate<br />
situation in relation to inadequate food and medical supplies.<br />
The only primary school, built using a Japanese donation in 2005, serves as the base for a military<br />
battalion ostensibly there to protect the Rohingya from hostile Rakhine incursions. The school accommodates<br />
1,100 children in two shifts. There are only 18 official, government-appointed teachers and another<br />
12 volunteer teachers from the Rohingya community. There is only one high school and it takes just 100<br />
students. There are 30 students present at any one time. All the teachers at the high school are Rohingya<br />
volunteers. The young headmaster told ISCI:<br />
Because of the great problems very few 16 year old students can join the class – most have no<br />
money, no food and their parents have no jobs. Education is free. All of the volunteer teachers<br />
collect donations from the village – they are getting a very small salary, almost half what they<br />
should.<br />
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The military is stationed in Aung Mingalar’s only primary school<br />
The lack of education for the entire Rohingya community in and around Sittwe was reported to us as one<br />
of the most pressing and depressing issues, young people effectively having had their futures removed<br />
from them over the course of a few days in 2012.<br />
The government allows Aung Mingalar residents to leave the ghetto twice a week (Mondays and Wednesdays)<br />
to visit relatives in the detention camp complex. The elders are required to make a list in advance of<br />
those who wish to travel, which must be presented at the ghetto’s security office. When they return they<br />
are required by the security forces within the ghetto to be signed in.<br />
Discussions with Aung Mingalar elders revealed that the Rakhine government maintains close surveillance<br />
over the leadership and management of the ghetto. According to one elder,<br />
When the government wants to know about our desires they come to the IDP camps and listen<br />
– it’s not a discussion… Whenever the government calls and wants to know anything about our<br />
situation, we can leave and attend meetings. 255<br />
In order to leave the ghetto for these meetings they must, however, be escorted by government military<br />
officers.<br />
255 Aung Mingalar elder interviewed, 29 January 2015.<br />
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5. ISOLATION AND SEGREGATION<br />
Other indicators of segregation<br />
The State’s strategy of ideological marginalisation is aided by the media, if not always directly then<br />
through a pattern of self-censorship. An internal Myanmar Times memo, published by Foreign Policy in<br />
2014, reveals the power of government discourse. In it the Editor in Chief delivers a resounding message<br />
to his editorial team,<br />
… no material is to be run in any of our newspapers with regard to the Rohingya, Bengalis,<br />
Muslims and Buddhists and the ongoing issues in Rakhine without direct approval from my<br />
desk… Our coverage is unlikely to matter substantively in the scheme of things and there<br />
appears little sense in placing our heads on the block right at this time… 256<br />
Aung Zaw, founder and editor of the Irrawaddy magazine, said:<br />
A lot of local editors, Burmese editors, even if they do not issue such a memo, would still<br />
definitely tell their reporters to be careful with their reporting, or to ignore these issues completely…<br />
There is a profound fear [of backlash]. There is a lot of self-censorship, especially on the issue<br />
of the Rohingya. 257<br />
The Rakhine state authorities have, as much as possible, attempted to isolate the Rohingya from both<br />
wider Myanmar society and the international community. Rohingya known to have spoken to journalists<br />
and UN Special Rapporteurs have been harassed and beaten by the authorities. In light of this, ISCI visits<br />
to Rohingya camps, villages and Aung Mingalar ghetto were, of necessity, clandestine. As noted above all<br />
requests by ISCI to enter northern Rakhine state were denied and Rakhine state’s Security Minister made<br />
it explicit to the Attorney General that ISCI was to be denied access to northern Rakhine state in order to<br />
prevent the team from meeting with Rohingya living there.<br />
The majority of <strong>IN</strong>GO staff members interviewed requested anonymity both as individuals and in terms of<br />
organisational affiliation in order not to jeopardise staff security and operations, both in Rakhine state and<br />
other regions of the country. Given MSF’s expulsion in 2014, this reticence is understandable but demonstrates<br />
a disturbing and chilling effect on the international community’s advocacy function.<br />
The claim by the UN on 25 May 2015 of ‘recent improvements in the conditions in Rakhine, including<br />
efforts to improve the situation of the IDPs’ 258 is gravely misleading. ISCI’s research reveals continued<br />
persecution designed to bring about the destruction of the Rohingya. The UN is in a position to know this<br />
and in making such statements, diminishes the profound suffering experienced by the Rohingya, which is<br />
highlighted by the systematic weakening of the community.<br />
256 Traywick, C and Scobey-Thal, J, ‘The Self-Censorship Shuffle: Why One Australian Media Mogul Chose to Kowtow to<br />
Myanmar’s Generals’, Foreign Policy, 29 May 2014: http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/05/29/the-self-censorship-shuffle-whyone-australian-media-mogul-chose-to-kowtow-to-myanmars-generals/.<br />
Accessed 11 October 2015.<br />
257 Ibid.<br />
258 Made by a delegation led by Vijay Nambiar, Special Advisor to the Secretary-General on Myanmar http://reliefweb.int/report/<br />
myanmar/un-secretary-general-s-special-advisor-myanmar-and-senior-un-representatives-visit<br />
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88
6. SYSTEMATIC WEAKEN<strong>IN</strong>G<br />
Unregistered Rohingya camp, Sittwe camp complex<br />
Once the victims have been isolated from the rest of society, the perpetrators typically<br />
implement a series of measures aimed at weakening them systematically. (Feierstein) 259<br />
259 Feierstein, D, Genocide as Social Practice, p. 116<br />
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ISCI’s findings indicate that the Rohingya have been systematically weakened – physically, psychologically<br />
and collectively – to such an extent that their agency and purposefulness has effectively been<br />
destroyed. This weakening has been orchestrated through planned illness, hunger, loss of livelihood<br />
and the removal of basic human rights. Compounding the physical and psychological weakening that<br />
illness, hunger and humiliation bring, the Rohingya suffer sporadic and unpunished violence, torture and<br />
killings. As a result the Rohingya have effectively been deprived of the capacity to organise politically, to<br />
campaign, protest or otherwise resist the policies of the State.<br />
Conditions of detention<br />
Rohingya living in the ghetto, camps and villages in and around Sittwe are subjected to wretched living<br />
conditions; characterised by overcrowding, hunger, illness and despair. There are virtually no opportunities<br />
to engage in livelihood activities, and IDPs are almost wholly reliant on monthly aid deliveries from<br />
the World Food Programme (WFP). Without work and education people mill around without purpose or<br />
direction. Some are reduced to begging from other IDPs and the few internationals that gain access to the<br />
camps. Depression is apparent in all the Rohingya camps and there are reportedly high levels of domestic<br />
violence. Women, who in the past would have been occupied with visits to market, cooking, cleaning,<br />
socialising and caring for children, lie on the floors of their cramped huts in the middle of the day, a sense<br />
of hopelessness pervading the atmosphere.<br />
Stripped of agency and human dignity, the Rohingya are living in broken communities where social<br />
cohesion no longer exists. Interviewees explained to ISCI that they are experiencing humiliation, abuse,<br />
and harassment at the hands of the authorities and the arbitrarily appointed camp leaders. As a result,<br />
lives and relationships are fractured and shrouded in despair. One interviewee in the Ohn Daw Gyi West<br />
camp explained that despite the existence of a nearby school, neither he nor his children had the energy<br />
or motivation to walk the 15 minutes from their camp shelters. 260 An activist reported accounts of sexual<br />
abuse and of men raping their own daughters: ‘when you put human beings in a situation where only<br />
animals can survive, they become animals. They lose all sense of human values.’ 261<br />
The Rohingya are living an existence so wretched that tens of thousands have been forced to flee. One<br />
woman, after describing the misery of life for her community in the camp, pleaded through tears, if the<br />
international community can’t help us, please drop a bomb on us and kill all of us. 262<br />
260 Interviewed on 24 January 2015.<br />
261 Interview with political activist in Dhaka, Bangladesh, 4 February 2015.<br />
262 Interview conducted in a Sittwe Rohingya IDP camp on 10 December 2014.<br />
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6. SYSTEMATIC WEAKEN<strong>IN</strong>G<br />
Registered Rohingya IDP camp, Sittwe<br />
In stark contrast to the Rohingya and Maramagyi camps visited, many Rakhine IDPs are housed in<br />
relatively high quality, permanent buildings. In Sat Yoe Kya camp, the houses are laid out along wide well<br />
maintained streets and run alongside a river which provides an alternative boat route for travel to downtown<br />
Sittwe. Each family has its own house with an indoor toilet, separate living and sleeping areas. The<br />
houses are large and raised on stilts to protect from flooding, also providing a cool and spacious outdoor<br />
cooking and living area. Interviews with residents revealed that their new homes were generally of a<br />
better quality than the ones they had lived in Sittwe before the violence. One older man, a trishaw driver<br />
caring for his blind wife, told researchers that ‘This house is better than my Nasi house… before [the 2012<br />
conflict] back in our village we lived in a very poor condition, so it's a lot better compared to then…back<br />
then we even had to worry about the food and we didn’t even have enough money to buy rice’. He noted<br />
that his family now received food donations, from the government he thought. 263 The sense of community<br />
here was evident during this interview when a young neighbour and her small sister arrived and prepared<br />
food for the couple.<br />
263 Middle aged Rakhine man interviewed at Sat Yoe Kya Rakhine IDP camp, November 2015.<br />
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Sat Yoe Kya Rakhine IDP camp<br />
It is worth noting that the conditions for Rakhine IDPs in Set Yone Su 2 are not as comfortable.<br />
Awaiting new houses, promised them by the government, a group ISCI spoke with complained that their IDP<br />
Rakhine neighbours had:<br />
better single houses with gardens [at Sat Yoe Kyaw] and we live in shelters. They have their<br />
own toilets. Here, there is one toilet between two households. In one household, there are sometimes<br />
6-10 people…Its difficult living in this camp. We need more assistance, more food and more<br />
rations. Living here is difficult, especially transportation to Sittwe. Most jobs are in Sittwe and<br />
it takes one hour to get to Sittwe market and costs 500 kyat. 264<br />
The shelters in the Rohingya camps are, however, of a different order and house up to four families. Those<br />
interviewed complained about the stifling heat and a complete lack of privacy – each family’s section<br />
consists of up to two rooms and house up to eight people. The shelters were built as a temporary solution<br />
three years ago and it is unclear how long they will last. On the longevity of the shelters, a senior <strong>IN</strong>GO<br />
respondent reported that it is, “Anybody’s guess. As long as they stand … [and] if any tropical storm comes,<br />
they’re wiped out. And, even in the rainy season, they’re in low-lying areas, and they become flooded.” 265<br />
On the outskirts of the official IDP camps there are small squalid shelters made out of tarpaulin and<br />
plastic sheets. These are home to the unregistered IDPs, who live in deplorable conditions without the<br />
assistance of <strong>IN</strong>GOs and who eke out a living by begging from IDPs who do receive rations.<br />
264 Interview with Rakhine IDPs, Sittwe, 23 January 2015.<br />
265 Interviewed on 23 February 2015, Yangon.<br />
92
6. SYSTEMATIC WEAKEN<strong>IN</strong>G<br />
Denial of healthcare<br />
Rohingya IDP children, IDP camp complex, Sittwe,<br />
November 2014<br />
The Myanmar government has been responsible for a series of key decisions to remove all but the most<br />
rudimentary healthcare services from the Rohingya in Rakhine state. Removal of healthcare is a powerful<br />
means of weakening a community. ISCI’s observations when visiting camps and villages and its<br />
discussions with residents, occasional clinic staff and local pharmacists revealed widespread chronic<br />
illness, including: diarrhoea, tuberculosis, stress ailments, glaucoma, depression and infant malnutrition.<br />
ISCI researchers witnessed in camps around Sittwe and Mrauk U and inside Aung Mingalar ghetto a<br />
visible health crisis, with empty, largely unstaffed clinics; minimal or no medical equipment; and reported<br />
healthcare visits from Rakhine doctors once or twice a week for up to two hours. A Rohingya man<br />
expressed his frustration at the health situation in Sittwe’s Rohingya camp complex, ‘The government<br />
builds clinics, but there are no doctors.’ 266 ISCI researchers observed sick, dying and dead children during<br />
the course of this research, all from apparently preventable disease.<br />
In February 2014 Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF Holland), the only provider of emergency referrals and<br />
healthcare services to Rohingya in northern Rakhine state, was expelled from Myanmar following the<br />
announcement of their treatment of 22 Rohingya victims in the northern Rakhine State village of Dar<br />
Chee Yar Tan following a concerted attack by local Rakhine. The government denied reports that a<br />
massacre had taken place and expelled MSF from Myanmar for making false and ‘provocative’ claims. 267<br />
In a Mrauk U Rohingya village (beside one of the most deprived and squalid Rohingya camps observed by<br />
the researchers), a teacher explained the worsening health crisis:<br />
266 Interview conducted in Rohingya IDP camp complex, 24 January 2015.<br />
267 ‘Medecins Sans Frontieres’ shock at Myanmar suspension’, BBC, 28 February 2014: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worldasia-26379804.<br />
Accessed 10 October.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
They only have clinics in Rakhine villages, there are none here. The ICRC come twice a month,<br />
if there is a problem we call them. When the ICRC run out of medicine, after two hours, they<br />
leave. We have no emergency medicine, so many people are dying in our village. Now we can’t<br />
go to the other side, we used to go to Mrauk U township general hospital… we used to be able to<br />
pay 50-70,000 kyat [USD $39 - $54] and apply one month in advance for a 14-day permit, to<br />
go to hospital, in Minbya, Kyauk Taw and Sittwe. Now we are not allowed to Mrauk U township<br />
we can only stay in the Muslim area.<br />
Pharmacy at a Rohingya IDP camp, Sittwe, November 2014<br />
Researchers heard a number of accounts of children under four dying of diarrhoea and of individuals<br />
being denied the possibility of treatment in Sittwe hospital. Discussions with a range of informants<br />
indicated that there is no government monitoring of disease or health services in the Rohingya camps,<br />
villages and Aung Mingalar. This represents conscious neglect and indifference by the Myanmar state to<br />
the health of its Rohingya inhabitants.<br />
Together, the action and inaction of the authorities provide compelling evidence of the deliberate creation<br />
of a humanitarian health crisis. For the Myanmar State, untreated disease and medical complications are<br />
a powerful form of unwanted population control.<br />
94
6. SYSTEMATIC WEAKEN<strong>IN</strong>G<br />
Hunger crisis<br />
Food aid deliveries arriving in Sittwe IDP camp complex, 7 November 2014<br />
ISCI saw evidence of a hunger crisis within all Rohingya camps and communities. Researchers observed<br />
the signs of malnutrition on a daily basis in the camps, including children with distended abdomens and<br />
discoloured hair. This was especially prevalent in the ‘unregistered’ areas of camps. Similarly, within<br />
Aung Mingalar ghetto a source reported:<br />
The state donates 200 bags of rice for the whole community – we need 900 bags of rice so we<br />
have to ask donors in Rangoon [Yangon] from our Rohingya side. The international community<br />
provides nothing because this community is not registered IDP… People are desperate for food<br />
because the state rations are so meagre. 268<br />
These observations were corroborated by informal discussions with representatives from the inter-<br />
national community, who described dire conditions in the detention camps and reported concerns over<br />
food shortages.<br />
In July 2015, however, the WFP announced it would be reducing rations to IDP camps, a move that it<br />
claimed was “predominantly motivated by the changing humanitarian situation as a result of improved<br />
household food security situation among IDPs.” 269 Rice supplied to IDPs is to be reduced by 10% and<br />
268 Aung Mingalar elder interviewed, 29 January 2015.<br />
269 Stoakes, E, ‘Myanmar’s Most Vulnerable Face Rations Cut’, The Diplomat, 25 July 2015: http://thediplomat.com/2015/07/<br />
myanmars-most-vulnerable-face-rations-cut/. Accessed 7 October 2015.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
non-food items by around 20%. The same week, July 2015, the State-run newspaper Global New Light<br />
of Myanmar ran an article with the headline: ‘Excess relief goods sold at stalls in Rakhine: sources’. The<br />
article claimed that an oversupply of relief goods had been provided by international organisations who<br />
were relying on numbers submitted by camp committees due to difficulties associated with counting the<br />
refugees. 270 ISCI interviews provided a very different picture. Rohingya consistently reported to us that<br />
food aid was arriving up to three weeks late, and that people would go hungry or borrow from others<br />
based on the expectation of the arrival of the food at some future stage. Reported food delays were<br />
denied by the WFP in discussion with ISCI. The reports, however, were numerous, consistent and<br />
corroborated by many Rohingya in different geographical areas. In an isolated Rohingya host village in<br />
Mrauk U, in January 2015, ISCI was told:<br />
We’ve had no WFP deliveries since December [2014]. Two hundred households get rations from<br />
the WFP, their houses were burned. Five hundred others don’t have the right to food. … Some<br />
of the people receiving rations live in the IDP camps and some in the village … We don’t have<br />
enough food … Before we could buy food and work as fishermen and in Rakhine villages, but<br />
now we have no freedom. There are no fish in the river. We cannot go far down the river<br />
because of the aggression. 271<br />
Interviews in a range of camps revealed that Rohingya did sell rice and other forms of aid at market<br />
because it was the only means by which they could secure the money to purchase fresh vegetables and<br />
other necessities not provided by aid organisations. The food provided by the WFP – oil, rice, chickpeas,<br />
salt – is not only insufficient, it is also devoid of major vitamins and minerals.<br />
270 ‘Excess relief goods sold at stalls in Rakhine: sources’, The Global New Light of Myanmar, 16 July 2015:<br />
http://globalnewlightofmyanmar.com/excess-relief-goods-sold-at-stalls-in-rakhine-sources/. Accessed 10 October 2015.<br />
271 Interview with Rohingya village administrator, Mrauk U, 27 January 2015.<br />
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6. SYSTEMATIC WEAKEN<strong>IN</strong>G<br />
Loss of livelihood<br />
Cow dung being dried for fuel, inside Rohingya IDP camp, Sittwe<br />
ISCI heard many accounts of how Rohingya livelihoods had been lost or destroyed. Rohingya villagers<br />
reported that since the 2012 violence virtually all opportunities to work had been removed:<br />
• All businesses are lost, our position are lost. If the Rakhine are indebted to us they don’t have<br />
to pay back, but the Rakhine come to the village to collect debt. 272<br />
• We are powerless. This used to be a rich village, there were doctors here. We are poor, we<br />
have no education and business, we are nothing. 273<br />
Inside the Rohingya camps the only ‘gainful’ activity observed was the collection and drying of cow dung<br />
for fuel, which was mainly done by children who have no schools to go to. Some Rohingya have been<br />
employed as casual labourers to build the new, vast police barracks and the new parliament buildings<br />
being constructed on the outskirts of Sittwe, while others can engage in limited fishing activities.<br />
However, the vast majority of Rohingya have absolutely no opportunity to earn money and rely on the<br />
charity of a stifled international community and a government interested only in their ultimate removal.<br />
272 Interview with Rohingya man Mrauk U 27 January 2015.<br />
273 Interview with Rohingya elder Mrauk U 27 January 2015.<br />
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Food aid sold at Thae Chaung Market, January 2015<br />
98
7. CONCLUSION<br />
The Rohingya face the final stages of genocide. Decades of persecution have taken on a new and<br />
intensified form since mass killings in 2012. The marked escalation in State-sponsored stigmatisation,<br />
discrimination, violence and segregation, and the systematic weakening of the community, make<br />
precarious the very existence of the Rohingya.<br />
The report analyses the persecution of the Rohingya against the six stages of genocide outlined by Daniel<br />
Feierstein: stigmatisation (and dehumanisation); harassment, violence and terror; isolation and segregation;<br />
systematic weakening; mass annihilation; and finally symbolic enactment involving the removal<br />
of the victim group from the collective history. The report concludes that the Rohingya have suffered the<br />
first four of the six stages of genocide. They have been, and continue to be, stigmatized, dehumanised<br />
and discriminated against. They have been harassed, terrorized and slaughtered. They have been isolated<br />
and segregated into detention camps and securitised villages and ghettos. They have been systematically<br />
weakened through hunger, illness, denial of civil rights and loss of livelihood. All of this places them at<br />
high risk of annihilation.<br />
The evidence documented reveals that these genocidal processes have been orchestrated at the highest<br />
levels of State and local Rakhine government. They have been led by State officials, Rakhine politicians,<br />
Buddhist monks and Rakhine civil society activists. The Rohingya have been subjected to a virulent and<br />
official nationwide policy and propaganda campaign which has incrementally removed them from the<br />
State’s sphere of responsibility. The State’s persistent and intensified ‘othering’ of the Rohingya as outsiders,<br />
illegal Bengali immigrants and potential terrorists has given a green light to Rakhine nationalists<br />
and Islamophobic monks to orchestrate invidious campaigns of race and religious hatred reminiscent of<br />
those witnessed in Germany in the 1930s and Rwanda in the early 1990s.<br />
The broader parallels with other genocides are stark and serve as a bleak and urgent warning. In<br />
Rwanda, the state achieved its goal of mobilising ordinary Hutus to commit mass murder through<br />
propaganda, terror techniques and the elimination of moderate Hutus and the political opposition. 274<br />
The Sangha-led stigmatization of the Rohingya described in this report vividly recalls the Rwandan<br />
government-backed propaganda campaigns, where the ‘othering’ had the effect of both mobilising and<br />
desensitizing Hutu perpetrators to the mass killing of their Tutsi neighbours.<br />
274 Newbury, D, ‘Understanding Genocide’, African Studies Review, 41(1), April 1998, p. 80.<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
In both Germany and Rwanda the use of ethnically marked identity cards became central in the<br />
implementation of the genocide. For the vast majority of Rohingya, the absence of an identity card or<br />
the possession of a white or green identity card marks them out as people without citizenship and<br />
entitlement.<br />
Dehumanisation and stigmatisation techniques are reinforced through segregation and systematic<br />
isolation. 275 Social and physical exclusion are key elements of genocide controlled by the state. In<br />
Germany, Jews were banned from public places, excluded from work in a wide range of professions,<br />
ghettoised and later forced into concentration camps where they were systematically weakened to<br />
the point of death. In the Rohingya camps, villages and Aung Mingalar ghetto a deeply weakened and<br />
traumatised population endures the barest of lives and denial of basic human rights with the ever-present<br />
fear of violent attack.<br />
In addition to a high level of cooperation between the state security forces and the bureaucracy, the participation<br />
and complicity of the majority of the local population is a necessary prerequisite for genocide. 276<br />
Once a group has been classified and clearly identifiable or segregated in ghetto and camp-like spaces,<br />
the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is physically reinforced. The state and its proxies can then continue<br />
with an unhindered programme of dehumanisation aimed at securing the complicity of the local<br />
population through a combination of propaganda, coercion and terror. The Rakhine people, who themselves<br />
have suffered decades of oppression and neglect at the hands of the Myanmar government to<br />
the point where their own culture is under threat, are particularly receptive to nationalist and religious<br />
propaganda.<br />
In Myanmar’s genocidal process, two stages remain: extermination and ‘symbolic enactment’. While<br />
extermination or mass killing on the scale of the German, Rwandan, Kosovan or Cambodian genocides<br />
is not inevitable, it cannot be ruled out. This report demonstrates that the infrastructure and ideological<br />
base for mass killings exist, and that the elimination of the Rohingya, though not always visible, is well<br />
under way. Myanmar’s Rohingya are being slowly annihilated through sporadic massacres, mass flight,<br />
systematic weakening and denial of identity.<br />
Elements of ‘symbolic enactment’ are also present – not least in the state’s elimination and denial of the<br />
‘Rohingya’ ethnicity and its effective removal of the word from the lexicon of the Myanmar language.<br />
This report concludes with an urgent warning to civil society in Myanmar, to international civil society,<br />
to the government of Myanmar and to international states. A genocidal process is underway in Myanmar<br />
and if it follows the path outlined in this report, it is yet to be completed. It can be stopped but not without<br />
confronting the fact that it is, indeed, a genocide.<br />
The government is not killing us with guns but is indirectly killing us through a lack of healthcare<br />
and forcing us to leave to third countries. We are prisoners, living in a prison. We are not<br />
getting a normal food supply. We have no education here. We have nothing here. How can we<br />
continue with life here? 277<br />
275 Lecomte, J M, Teaching about the Holocaust, p. 49.<br />
276 Mukimbiri, J, ‘The Seven Stages of the Rwandan Genocide’, p. 823.<br />
277 Rohingya man, Thae Chaung, IDP camp 7 November 2014.<br />
100
7. CONCLUSION<br />
Child playing in Rohingya registered IDP camp, Sittwe<br />
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COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
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Leaked Documents<br />
Leaked document 1: Submissions presented to Myanmar President Thein Sein by letter, dated 15 October<br />
2013, by representatives of Rakhine state. Seen and sanctioned by Shwe Mann. Leaked to Fortify Rights;<br />
acquired by ISCI researchers from Al Jazeera.<br />
A. Submitted by U Thar Pwin (Lawyer), ‘Peace and stability of Rakhine state and the importance<br />
of geo-politics’.<br />
B. Submitted by Arakan Human Rights and Development Organization (AHRDO).<br />
C. Summary findings of submissions presented to Myanmar President Thein Sein, 15 October<br />
2015.<br />
D. U Zaw Myo Naing, ‘Submission by a student for the Rakhine State’.<br />
Leaked document 2: SPDC Rohingya Extermination Plan, adopted in 1988 on the basis of the proposals<br />
submitted by Col. Tha Kyaw (a Rakhine), Chairman of the National Unity Party.<br />
105
COUNTDOWN TO ANNIHILATION: <strong>GENOCIDE</strong> <strong>IN</strong> <strong>MYANMAR</strong><br />
Leaked document 3: Nyi Pyi Taw Divisional Military Headquarters, No (13) Combatants Organizing<br />
School, ‘Fear of Extinction of Race’, Lecture by Bo Toe Naing, Gazette No- Army 62505, Ka Tha No. 32, 26<br />
October 2012. Acquired from Al Jazeera.<br />
Leaked document 4: Letter from the [REDACTED] State Religious Affairs Office to [REDACTED] State<br />
Police Office, 14 March 2013.<br />
Leaked document 5: Letters from District General Administration Department, [REDACTED] District,<br />
[REDACTED] to Township Administrator, [REDACTED]. Letter No. 100/1-1/U1 (4643), ‘Matter relating to<br />
people of Islamic faith’, 12 September 2013.<br />
Leaked document 6: Letter from the Thandwe District General Administration Department to the Chairman<br />
of Township Traffic Lines Control committee, 24 October 2012.<br />
106
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